Sure, all the fancy “Go To” stuff gives you a chance to see a lot of objects your first few nights out, but then what. When it’s all over you know nothing about the sky and you’re out of sites to see. I believe go to technology can greatly aid the experienced observer, but as a starter it’s just too much of a crutch. Spend the money on the optics; force yourself to learn your way around the sky. After using my 8″ dob for 2 short years and I still had a lot left to learn.
That said, my second scope was a goto scope as is my current (third) visual scope. I have seen many wonders of God’s creation that I couldn’t find with my dob, but that does not mean there is no longer any challenge to find an object, it is now more a matter of refining my skills as an observer and not having to worry about if I am even looking in the right place. I now go out and study a small area of the sky in detail. Trying to see every Deep Sky Object (DSO) in the area.
I still maintain that a 6″ or 8″ dob is a good first scope. Any smaller and you will be disappointed, any bigger and you might not use it. Once you have a scope for a year or so you will know how much set up and tear down time you are willing to accept.
My current equipment consists of:
- Solar viewing
- Coronado Personal Solar Scope
- TMB Planetart II SW 9mm
- GSO Superview 15mm
- Public programs and light polluted skies
- Celestron C11 GPS with XLT coatings
- Baader Hyperion Mark III zoom 8mm to 24mm
- f/ 6.3 focal reducer
- Moonlight motorized focuser
- UltraBlock Narrow band filter
- Dark skies
- 20″ Star Master f/4.5 with Sky Engineering goto and tracking
- Nagler Type 5 31mm
- Ethos 13mm
- Nagler Type 6 9mm
- Nagler Type 6 5mm
- Siebert Optics 1.5X Barlow
- OPT ED 2X 2″ Barlow
- O III filter
- Astro Photography
- Orion EG-G (now rebuilt as a Sky Watcher EQ6 PRO) mount
- Explore Scientific ED127
- ZWO ASI2600MC (primary camera)
- Orion Short Tube 80
- Altair GPCAM2-130 (guide camera)
- ZWO ASI220MM-MINI (for solar imaging with the PST)