John Deer wrote:

Read my message again in context. Someone named DOINK suggested a 18" dob
for the next real step.

I repeat : If you want to see more deep sky objects a 10" or 12" dob
makes more sense.

OK, I will apologize. I had assumed that you were simply trolling,
but it's always smarter to give people the benefit of the doubt --
when there's doubt.

With Doink, of course, there's no doubt. His suggestion that
the next step up from an 8" SCT is an 18" Dob is so wildly
out of touch with reality that it has to be either a joke or
a troll. I dismissed it out of hand as not worthy of comment,
and almost forgot that it had been made.

You're certainly right that for somebody considering upgrading
from an 8" SCT to an 11" SCT, a 10" or 12" Dob is a much more
reasonable suggestion than an 18" Dob. If you had wanted to
avoid argument, you could have made that explicit.

And the wider field of view will allow objects to be found much more
easily.

Sorry, as someone who owns a 12.5" Dob and loves it, I do not agree.
Just last night, I was thinking how nice it would be to have an
equatorial mount so that I would *know* immediately which way was
celestial north instead of having to infer it from star charts.
I'm quite sure that I could find stuff faster with an equatorial-
mounted 11" SCT. Especially since much of the stuff I look for
isn't visible at low magnifications.

That's not to say that I would trade my Dob for an 11" SCT, mind
you! It has many advantages. But finding things isn't one of them.

- Tony Flanders