Quote:
Originally Posted by Tulloch
Personally, I hated manually looking for stuff, my life changed considerably for the better once I upgraded to a Goto scope.
Andrew
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That's sort of a subjective thing.
Older people who have been observing for a few decades (started in 1960's, 1970's or 1980's) never had the luxury of computers or GOTO. You basically had to learn the sky and how to find stuff. It is a many years exercise to become highly proficient; and with peoples modern day busy lives a lot of people just don't have that time. They need to maximise their time at the eyepiece. Computers, Digital Setting Circles and GOTO that are currently available save an enormous amount of time and allow people to observe a much greater number of targets in a given time. That is how many people choose to spend their available astronomy time and I can fully understand why they do that. The downside to that is that they only get to see the targets and don't learn the sky, the constellation layouts and how to find stuff. Personally I've gone full circle. All 3 of my scopes have Argo Navis and Servocat on them. However, I probably only use the Servocat 15% to 20% of the time and use the Argo Navis about 90% of the time. When observing DSO's I actually prefer to have the Servocat Off as I can push the scope around manually to center whatever part of the target I want to focus on, or to scan the surrounding star fields. Whenever I do outreach with 3RF, which was quite often pre COVID, I don't use the Servocat or the Argo Navis. I can find and center a large number of showpiece targets, which is what people want to see at outreach, a lot faster from memory and pushing the scope straight there, than you can do with tracking and GOTO, particularly if you want to go from one side of the sky to the other. It can also depend on the sky conditions you observe under. It's a lot easier to manually find targets under dark skies, than it is under urban / rural skies.
GOTO and Tracking are certainly very nice to have and can save some people a lot of time and maximise the targets they observe in their available time. They aren't an absolute necessity and certainly don't teach you much in regard to how to find stuff. That all having been said I wouldn't have a scope without them these days, for the times I do want to use them.
Cheers
John B