Beginners GoTo with Scope

[rathalian]

I've been looking for a telescope for some time and am on a bit of a budget and have a couple of constraints.

While I was interested in an 8" Dobsonian mounted Newtonian, I also want a goto or tracker for convenience and also a concern I have re a tremor I have which makes using Binoculars near impossible, and presumarly would affect 'driving' a scope?

So..I'm looking for something that will collect a decent amount of light, preferably have goto or tracking and something that is more for viewing rather than astrophotography.

I have a budget up to $800 however I've seen on sites like Andrews that items such as goto Dobs (8") are around $1400.

Thoughts are welcome. I also appreciate spending to a budget can cause the purchase to not deliver a decent viewing experience.

[Matty (Matt Fowler)]

Hi mate im fairly new to this game as well but would definately recommend the goto dob. I own a Skywatcher 14' goto and its a fantastic setup. a vast improvement from the old manual eq mounted newtonian i had before. Yes its a bit of an expensive step from the manual mount. You could keep an eye on Ebay and the classifieds on this forum. I found mine after patiently checking ebay auctions for the last 7 months. Bit time consuming yes but i eventually ended up with somthing even bigger than i was planning for at my budget of $2000. I had originally been thinking of a nextstar 8' or 10' skywatcher dob. Check out Ushop.com.au I think they had the SW 8' goto dob for just over a thousand. (And no monitors i dont work for them, they have just been very helpfull to me in recent past. I actually sell booze for a living)
hope this helps

[Allan_L (Allan)]

For $799 you can get a brand new Celestron Nexstar 4SE.
A Mak. with good good optics and very good goto.
It is small and easy to move about.
I have one as my grab and go and I love it.

But if faint fuzzies are your target, and you can stretch to the price of the GoTo skywatcher DOBs you mention, you will find it much more satisfying with the extra light, albeit more complicated to set up collimate etc etc etc

Where abouts are you?

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

I would always recommend a dob as big as you can afford/handle. If you are concerned about tremors affecting you when using a non goto model I would suggest you try and get along to an observing night or club night and see if you can try one out. At least then you will know that spending the money on GoTo is really worth it. As with all things, scopes are a trade off. With GoTo you sacrifice aperture for convenience.

I would agree with Allan that the $SE is not a bad scope BUT it is still only 4" so very limited in terms of DSOs that t can capture.

Malcolm

[rathalian]

thanks for your wise word guys.

I had a look and play with a 10" dob and found it to be very easy to manipulate and quite steady when using the bump/steer method i.e. hands off as much as possible (head is nice and steady )

So...I'll focus on a steering/bumping technique that works for me and ensure I get the value of more aperture (I ended up buying the 10" scope)

Will also pull my thumb out and learn the sky, starting with the simple / easy to get to things and working my way up. My phone has a good gps/compass etc. in it that works extremely well with those virtual sky apps and I picked up a sky and space magazine today.

[stephenb (Stephen)]

Don't forget the ol' favorite for the computer: Stellarium! Completely free to download: http://stellarium.org