Thanks for the advice Paddy.
I spoke with a local dealer yesterday who wants to sell me a MAK102 for a little bit more than Andrews can, and size wise I'm happy to do that.
But, I've popped back on to the skywatcher website and used the compare function and yes, bang for your buck is certainly where the Dobsonians hold their own.
A couple of weekends ago I did go to a local astronomy club meet and had a look through a Bintel 10" Dobsonian and a 5" (I think) Meade Maksutov with all the bells and whistles. The Dob was better IMHO, and far cheaper, but the difference in handling was quite obvious.... I also note what you say about looking at deep sky stuff in monochrome. All advice gratefully accepted.
About the point and shoot use of a Dobsonian and where you say pick up some star charts to learn your way around, I did get the latest Australian Sky and Telescope yesterday and noticed that the star charts go out to a magnitude of +4, but an 8" Dob can (under ideal conditions I'm sure) image +14.2 (by spec). That would seem to be a BIG difference, and I know that it would be all but impossible to print on A4 paper a star chart showing all objects out to +14.2, but how does one find all the "further" stuff with a Dobsonian when pointing accuracy would seem to be so very critical?
Am I getting ahead of myself here?
|