[Crackers (Craig)]

Hello all, I've been lurking around IIS for the past couple of weeks hoping to pick up enough info so that I wouldn't need to do this, but it seems the more info I get, the further from making a decision I am. What you have here is sensational and it is great to know that there are so many of you out there willing to share your knowledge and passion.

Okay, that's enough smoke blowing - here comes the questions. I want to buy my first serious telescope after messing about with some pretty dodgy ones in the past. When I started the hunt, I fell in love with the Meade ETXC-125PE. The appeal of the GoTo mount coupled with what are apparently terrific optics seemed perfect. But then I read an awful lot of complaints about the motor systems and got worried and started looking at Celestron's NexStar 6SE as the closest possible alternative to the ETX.

If I had stopped there it would have been wonderful, but I made the mistake of reading Brian's brilliant General Principles for Choosing Your First Telescope. Now I'm convinced that an 8-10" dob is the only reasonable choice and that I was a fool to consider the other two.

My question comes in multiple parts. I live in the Adelaide Hills and have reasonably dark skies (not like when I lived on the Nullabor - but still pretty good) with only the lower reaches of the Western Sky being badly light polluted. With the darker skies, do I need something as big as the dobs or would the 6" Nexstar CST show me all I need to see? Secondly, if I were to choose a dob, how easy are they to track objects with manually? I would like to keep whatever I'm looking at in the FOV for more than a few seconds.

To clarify what I want, I would like to do some moon and planetary observing, but I want something flexible enough to look at DSOs as well - a bit of an all rounder, I suppose. I have no grand objectives, I just want to discover thye wondrous universe that lurks out there.

I have a budget of about $2k which would get me just the basic setup for the ETX or NexStar, whereas I would have some play money for accessories with the dob, if someone can convince me that it's easy enough to use. Please help!

Craig