Howdy folks!
I'm looking to buy my father a telescope and hoping for a little assistance. He's always been an astronomy buff, but never had a nice telescope before. 20 years ago when I was a kid, he had a crappy little manual refractor that was kinda frustrating to use and he abandoned it after a while. My childhood astronomy highlight is that we did once see the blurry outline of Saturn! But now he's retired, and has been talking about wanting get back into the hobby with a fancy computerized telescope. I want to buy him the nicest one possible for his upcoming birthday, within the limits of what makes sense for his use cases.
He's a very non-technical person and a GoTo system is almost certainly the right choice for him. The easier it is to see something cool through the eyepiece, the better; if it's too fiddly or too hard to use, he just won't use it. He lives in a somewhat non-optimal location with a lot of light pollution (Bortle 6) and tree cover, so it will have to be a travel-friendly unit. He has mostly talked about wanting to look at planets and moons and the ISS, but he might possibly be interested in galaxies and nebulas too--if the result is not too disappointing with a travel-friendly scope. He won't be doing any photography.
I have no real knowledge of the hobby, but have done some research and narrowed down my search to two Celestron units: the 127SLT and 8SE. Both would be purchased with the external LiFePO battery, dew shield, and wifi unit so he can control it with his iPad, which he has become comfortable with. Being smartphone/tablet-compatible is a big plus.
I think the 127SLT will be better for travel, being 6 lbs lighter altogether, and maybe with lower cooldown times due to its smaller aperture? My impression is that as a Maksutov-Cassegrain unit, it will be better for viewing things within the solar system, but will be unsuitable for DSO viewing. The 8SE is a bit heavier and seems like it would be better at the latter while possibly being a little bit worse at the former? I'm fuzzy on that. I'm also fuzzy on whether these units include decent eyepieces or whether they need better ones to get a good amount of enjoyment from them.
Budget is not a practical concern, within reason. If the 8SE is better in every way compared to the 127SLT, I'd get that for him. Does it seem like either of these two units would be suitable? Are there other offerings from alternative companies that you would recommend instead? Are there additional accessories it would be nice to have to enhance the enjoyment of the telescope, or to make it simpler and easier to use?
Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge!