[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Hi Chris,

Before you lay your money down, it wouldn't be right if no one challenged your "wanting" of a goto scope is the right one if you are just after a visual instrument. There are certain physiological reasons why it would be advantageous to keep the scope "push to", that is only manually moving the scope.

Our eyes are made to detect movement. Keeping a dim image stuck static in the field of view will cause your eyes to become staturated and not as responsive to what is actually visible.

My passion in this hobby is sketching at the eyepiece. I considered motorising my 17.5" dob until two experiences changed my mind.

The first was a sketch I did last year of the Swan Nebula. I noticed that with even just a slight jiggle of the scope I actually saw fainter detail than with a static scope. This jiggling of the scope is an old observers trick which I have myself employed for many years, but this particular sketch affirmed that I didn't need motorising the scope.

The second was the non-motorised 25" scope of a fellow sketcher Alex Commino, qld here on IIS. For the reason noted above, Alex only has digital setting circles on his big dob to help locate objects.

In fact, even digital setting circles are also not necessary, even with giant dobs. I recently used a 36" dob that is totally manual. No motors, no digital setting circles, only a battery of finders set up next to the focuser and down at ground level. It did have the full kit & kabboodle of gizmos, only to have them ALL ripped out as the scope's owner found he didn't need them and he wasn't enjoying himself anymore with all the gadgets!

The money you save on keeping the scope push-pull you can spend on some really nice EPs and a filter or two.

Food for thought.

Alex.