[masraum]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Ha! I had a 16" Dobs that was a real light bucket! But what a pain to set up and track with. Good binos do a very nice job. I imagine you have some nice dark skies within a short drive?

Not really, at least, I wouldn't think so. To get to anything outside of white, red, orange or yellow on a light pollution map is probably going to be 2-3 hours. Houston and it's "suburbs" are 1.5-2 hours across, and then once you get someplace dark, you don't want to look in the direction of Houston. Pretty much all of my viewing has been done from home. I loved it when my mom lived in the middle of no where in the FL panhandle. That was pretty dark and enabled me to easily see things in an old cheap pair of binos that I couldn't see with my 8" in Houston.

16", very nice! I'm guessing it was a strut tube? That seems like just about the only reasonable way to manage something that big. I can only imagine the views through something like that.

One of these days, I hope to retire someplace in the country so I can observe whether it's with a scope, binos or naked eye.