Hi Hi From Northumberland

[Bernard254]

Hello Mike, welcome to the lounge

[Pete Presland]

hi welcome to SGL from peter in bedfordshire

[michigander]

Welcome to SGL, Mike!

Dana

[sloz1664]

Hi Mike and a warm welcome to the Lounge.

Cheers

Steve

[todd8137]

Hi from me welcome

pat

[Charon]

Hi Mike.

[Rich MedRev]

Hi Mike, welcome to SGL

You wont go wrong with the 8" Dob.

if you're promising clear skies until your scope arrives then dont rush to purchase will you!?!

[DrRobin]

Mike,

As I am about 4 miles from you and the weather has been either too cloudy, too windy, too much snow or just frozen solid (-5 the other week), I reckon we are due a run of good weather, just in time for a bright new scope.

[Pig]

Hiya and welcome

Shaun

[stellawolf]

Hi Mike & welcome to SGL

[DrRobin]

Hi Mike,

You asked about the suitability of an 8" Dob and the answer is dependant on a number of factors depending on what you want to look at.

The first choice is between manual, motor drive (tracking) or GOTO.

If you want to move into astrophotography then you need a auto tracking mount or GOTO. Note Dobs are great for the planets, but not very easy to photograph the deep sky objects. It can be done provided your exposure is less than 60 seconds, so you are restricted to the brighter objects. You really need an equatorial mount for this.

If you want to use it for visual only then a manual dob is fine, but will need to keep nudging it to keep what ever you are looking at in the field of view. Of course this gets harder the higher magnification you use.

The GOTOs are great for people who want to quickly fly from one object to another with looking it up on a star chart and nearly everyone has a view either for or against. Personally I like them, my first scope was a GOTO (SW 127 Mak)

The next big consideration is budget. You will get the biggest aperture for your money with a dob and therefore the best views. If your budget stretches a little more you might want to consider an auto tracking dob or even the same optical tube assembly on an EQ mount.

To give you an idea the 8" dob on manual mount is £289, the 8" on EQ5 with manual controls is £415, current prices from FLO, the sponsor of this site. They are pretty similar scopes, just different mounts.

Skywatcher are part of Synta, they also own the Celestron brand and others. For the money their optics are good, even if the supplied eyepieces are a little on the cheap are chearful side, but will provide good views. I still use a 25mm eyepiece I got with my SW dob for aligning my scopes. Eyepieces are all a standard size, either 1.25" or 2" and there are plenty available from a range of manufacturers. I like the Baader Hyperion eyepieces, they are medium priced but I think give great performance for the money.

There is also a healthy second hand market both on here (once you have 50 posts) and on astrobuysell.com/uk.

I hope this gives you some idea and answers more questions than it poses?

Regards

Robin

[alan g]

Hi Mike and welcome to SGL. This is definetely the place to find answers to your questions.

Looking forward to hearing about your new scope.

Alan.

[Flour Power]

Thank you everyone. I really must say that this is an exceptionally friendly place to hang out!

Special thanks to Robin for taking the time to reply to a question I posed in a PM. You've introduced an element of doubt - just when I thought I'd got it sorted! I'm very keen on photography and had sort of reconciled myself to visual astronomy (for now at least) but maybe - just maybe - I could persuade Mrs Power to release some extra funds....

I'm off up to Dundee with work for a couple of days so I'll have to give it a ponder. Or five. Or more.

Mike

[DrRobin]

Oops, sorry. You will find a dob easier to set up, but once you have found your object an EQ mount, even a manual one is easier to track as you only need to adjust one control.

Whichever you go for you will get a good scope which will give great views of the stars, planets, moon and DSOs.