Thread: any backyard astronomers here?

I've only ordered from Orion but that's in California. I don't know what's available in Europe. Orion might be willing to ship there though.

Lori

I've had both a large 12" Dobsonian and an 8" Schmidt-Cass. The Dob had Intelliscope, and the S-C has Goto. I preferred the Intelliscope, primarily because it was faster just to push the scope around rather than wait for the Goto motor to find its target. And the Goto only goes in one direction, to the right, so if your next target is 5 degrees to the left, it'll make a full 355 degree turn to get there! S-Cs also have a problem with fogging up much earlier in the evening than a Dob will.

The problem with the Dob was that it was huge. I used to have a Jeep Cherokee, and I could barely get the whole getup inside. A 10' is a bit more manageable but still large. It's hard to get a sense of how huge they can be from just pictures in the catalog. The Dob, being a Newtonian, also had a lot of maintenance issues. The mirrors had to be collimated a lot, and the larger the aperture the more sensitive the mirrors were to getting knocked out of place. I assume because they were heavier.

My current 8' Schmidt Cass works well, though. It doesn't have the maintenance issues and is very portable. If I had a stationary viewing area, though, I'd prefer a Dobsonian.