Comparison between two Newtonians

Yesterday evening I put up two telescopes side by side, my own 8" Portaball and my club's 12.5" NGT. No night for deep-sky, but seeing turned out to be great. Setting up the Portaball took 2 minutes, while I needed 20 minutes with the NGT, and even after so much time I wasn't satisfied with the collimation. There was a satelite transit in progress on Jupiter, and after a short time the GRS emerged. The Portaball gave excellent images at 240x, the shadow looked as a neat punched hole in the planet's disc, and even the satelite (haven't identified it) was clearly visible against the planet's surface. The cloud belts showed a wealth of detail, and contrast was great. In comparison the images of the NGT were lousy. The shadow was hardly visible, and none of the intricate detail in the planet's belts could be seen. To be fair: Handling the NGT for a single person is rather tough, and I should probably have spent another 5 minutes with the collimation. And for deep-sky purposes the extra aperture definitely is an advantage. But 90% of the time yesterday night I spent with the Portaball.

Last Sunday I spent the eveing out with my 8 inch Spooner dobsonian, and with a friend's 16" truss dobsonian. The images in the 16" were awesome. M 3 and 13 resolved to core at about 70x. All kinds of galaxies cropped up in unexpected places. Detail in the larger glaxies was less than I had hoped to see, but I was looking to see what would happen with largerinstruments, so I had my hopes up too high. I could see spiral structure in M 101 and 51, as well as a dark lane in 104 (way down in the soup). It was a very exciting night, but I am realy happy with my 8 inch Spooner. It's a wonderful blend of great views and no set up time, with planetary views limited by the seeing in Vermont.