Astronomy, or more to the point, the gear to look at stars, is too complicated!
This forum, and other astronomical boards, are doing my head in. So many new words and acronyms....took me two days just to figure out what 'EP' meant
I know zilch about astronomy other than I look in one end of a scope and see stars out the other end. I'm not even scientifically minded, more of a humanities-type person, but I really love star gazing and want to seriously get into it. I find planetariums complicated and the idea of constantly gazing and looking at charts a bit of a turn-off.
As I understand it, it comes down to this with a budget of about $4,000:
I can get something like an 8 inch Meade LX90 or one of the orange Celestrons GO-TO's that solve my navigation issues well within my budget. But they are a tad messier to set up and you simply cannot see as much through them as a dobsonian.
On the other hand, I can get a large-ish Meade Lightbridge, easy to set-up despite its size and really see some serious stuff (aperture, aperture, aperture!), BUT other than the Argo Narvis which looks/sounds complex for a newbie like me (228 pages of instructions anyone!?) Dobsonians are limited in that they have no GO-TO type features such as tracking and tours etc.
So is there a simple scope that balances some DSO visualising with a handy navigation instrument, or have I pretty-well summed it up?
Any feedback is appreciated, thanks.
P.S is the future GO-TO large aperture Dobsonians that will be sold completely as one unit instead of having to modify/add-on with after-market devices? If so any idea when will we see these on the market?