dman

Just googled "Equatorial Platform", and if I go for the dobsonian style then I'll definitely will be building one over the holidays now. And I won't be carrying the telescope around to much, from here it will be stored to where I will use it is a few meters out the garage door, so being heavy won't be an issue. The more research I'm doing the more confused or indecisive I am about a dobsonian or a EQ3 type of style

Hi Everyone I'm brand new to star gazing using a telescope, visited a few planetariums in the past and loved it, always wanted to get into it, and now I have the chance to do it. I'm looking for a good base setup, a greatish telescope that I can add to later on and build up, so later addons would be like a goto/motor, more eye pieces, getting a t connector and a good camera to take photos with, and anything and everything else I'm starting to learn about like barrow lenses/colour lenses etc. Photography isn't my main goal, it's just a nice to have to snap a photo every now and again. The telescope should preferably be compatible with most after market addons, either the same brand or others. I want to mostly view planets and moons, and some other deep objects, I can compromise between a narrow and wide FOV. The telescopes I'm currently looking at is the following, but I'm not sure all of them can be motorized and get good other addons for. Also the problem is I live in South Africa, so the available options are limited in what I can get my hands on, we don't have the super large range that I see in the US/UK, and shipping from the US/UK on a telescope to South Africa is not really an option, smaller items are shippabl Sky-Watcher 200mm (8") F/1200 Parabolic Truss-Tube Dobsonian, not sure how the gap between the two piece of it works or the drawbacks are. Sky-Watcher SK15075PEQ3-2 Reflector Telescope Sky-Watcher 130mm f/650 motorized Reflector (Black Diamond) Sky-Watcher 8" Dobsonian Telescope with Tension Control, or maybe the 10", this looks to me like the best bet, not sure if you can add a goto unit to this one ? Or the Orion Skyquest xt8 classic with crayford style focusser for a little bit more expensive, but it looks better all round Starsense explorer 114az Nice features, but seems limited CELESTRON ASTRO FI 130 NEWTONINAN TELESCOPE -> Seems very nice, is struggling to find a retailer in SA, and is a little over my budget Any advice would be much appreciated or other recommendations, or pointing me in a direction. Thank you very much, Dewald