Stephen Jessop wrote:
Cheers Phil

Thanks for the advice, I would like to take photos as well at some date so
would a dobsan be good for this as well? Can it be motorised as well?


For visual use (not photographic) and as a first scope, a dobsonian of no
less than 8" aperture would be a good compromise of cost, ease of use,
transportability and optical grasp. With a larger aperture you would see
more .. so that becomes a personal choice (e.g., if you have a fixed
observatory, or are really dedicated to the hobby, you could consider much
larger scopes). But an 8" dob ala the Orion series would be a good
starting point.


There are ways to use a Dob photographically for brighter objects. There
is a website on that he

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.p...63,201,0,0,1,0

The most I've ever done is point a digicam at one and get some credible
moon shots (as those of Starboard recently posted here).

Some folks mount Dobs on equatorial tracking platforms, either homemade
or commercial. Here is a reasonably priced commercial example:

http://www.johnsonian.com/products/type6.htm

Here's a page about how they work, with some construction plans (there
are many such websites out there, I suspect):

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/molyned...l_platform.htm

I've not done this, nor seen it done, and do not know whether the
tracking performance would support astrophotography of dimmer objects.

Phil