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Hi Sam
An 8" dob is the ideal beginners scope for visual astronomy. The reasons are many but the main ones are:
Easy to setup, just take the base outside, then the tube and put it on the base, insert an eyepiece and you are away.
Easy to collimate. Usually they are f6 so tolerant of slightly imperfect collimation. When I used my 8" I rarely touched the collimation anyway.
Easy to find things, it simply moves up and down and side to side so no getting used to the non intuitive motions of an EQ mount.
Cheap!! $$$'s per inch of aperture are the lowest possible.
Robust and low maintenance. No electronics or complicated mechanicals to go wrong.
Basically work out of the box, don't need any extra accessories to get started.
On the down side they can be a bit bulky (but wait until you get a 20"!!) and have limited use for imaging, although a solid tube one can be mounted on an EQ mount later on if that floats your boat!
As far as what you can see, planets are OK, all the Messier objects and hundreds of NGC's are easily visible with an 8" and M42 (the Orion Nebula) is spectacular through one.
Cheers
Malcolm
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