I'm re-entering amature astronomy with a homeade 10" f/6 dob from the 80s. It could use a good collimation job and probably a recoated mirror but despite this it still turns in fair to good performance today.
I have just begun building a 16" f/5 truss dob in hopes of getting better DSO visual results. I recently read about resolving the span between the two galaxies of M51. The author seemed to indicate 20" and up would really be needed. My current scope can't do that in my back yard (roughly mag 3.5, maybe 4, skies). To-date i've been fairly disapointed by Messier galactic objects. It does get quite a bit better when I drive out of town to Mag 5 or 5.5 skies, but M31 is still just a big smudge.
The traditional advice is 'join a club' (done) and look through a bunch of stuff (still in the process of this - there's a club 18", a big party in a couple of weeks, and publicly available 25" Obsession about 1 hour drive from here that I haven't looked through yet). So I think I'm on the right track. I'd like a little encouragement that building a new bigger bucket will be worth it.
I have just begun building a 16" f/5 truss dob in hopes of getting better DSO visual results. I recently read about resolving the span between the two galaxies of M51. The author seemed to indicate 20" and up would really be needed. My current scope can't do that in my back yard (roughly mag 3.5, maybe 4, skies). To-date i've been fairly disapointed by Messier galactic objects. It does get quite a bit better when I drive out of town to Mag 5 or 5.5 skies, but M31 is still just a big smudge.
The traditional advice is 'join a club' (done) and look through a bunch of stuff (still in the process of this - there's a club 18", a big party in a couple of weeks, and publicly available 25" Obsession about 1 hour drive from here that I haven't looked through yet). So I think I'm on the right track. I'd like a little encouragement that building a new bigger bucket will be worth it.
