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G'day Jim,
I've had a pair of 8x40's for several years now, from before I was into star gazing, and I think they're a great little all rounder although a little lacking in magnification for star work.
My brother gave me a pair of 20x80's some time back and I love them(!) although they are virtually impossible to use without a tripod.
Only recently bought a pair of 12x60's and I'm loving them too - a nice compromise between the 8's and 20's. Must admit though that I'm seriously considering mounting them on a tripod as well.
Anything with enough magnification to pick out a bit of stellar detail pretty well requires a solid mount.
Hard to go wrong with any decent set of nokkies though and I always have all 3 pairs handy when I'm doing a bit of viewing. It's nice to swap between the 3 different fields of view for comparison as some asterisms look better in some fields of view as opposed to others.
Also have a 12" dob, but depending what I'm looking at, sometimes the view through one of the nokkies is better than the scope.
If you really want to do a bit of stargazing then I would strongly advise that you don't get anything under 10x.
Hope this helps somewhat?
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