Hi board,
I am wanting some opinions on what sort of telescope I should buy, and what options to get and hoping some people here can add their input. I am your typical long time interest (since I was a little fella), first time buyer type of person.. hopefully one whom doesn't appear too ignorant in the eyes of the am-pro's like yourselves!
A few weeks ago my interest changed; at first I was looking to get a 6" newt/dob after reading up on a few overseas websites, and then your great forums after I found them. My original interest was in viewing the moon and local planets, so I thought the 6" should be portable enough to help me along with that, so was set on getting a GS 6" from Andrews (thanks again to these forums). However after a visit last weekend to my
local observatory things have changed. After spending a mere 30mins or so looking at DSO's (47 tucana, small/large magellanic clouds etc) everything changed, the planets seemed impressive, but nowhere near as impressive as what I was seeing through the 14" Celestron!
What I want to know is; is there a half-affordable (possibly less than $1k) telescope that exists in Australia that I can use from my backyard that would give even half as impressive a view as what I saw through the observatory scope from my back yard, which suffers from trees, two street lights and neighbouring houses (if only it was out of town like the observatory!). If not would such items be viewable (or worth viewing) with an 8" dob (or maybe even a 10" if they are half transportable)? I almost have the funds to buy an 8" GS dob at the moment, but if its worth spending more now to buy something more appropriate I am willing to wait (or grab a small loan to get it now
). Astrophotography(/tracking) is an interest, but not essential (hence the dob's
).
Thank you.
ps. it appears to get asked alot, so if you are interested in how I found the forums; I saw a link here from another forum (which I cant remember, I found it when googling for information!). I have noticed though that its hard to get any reference to iceinspace from google no matter what keywords I use (even using keywords specified in main pages meta tags!). Maybe I wasnt trying hard enough.