Practicality of Dobsonian telescopes I've been using binocular for more than a decade for visual observation. I'm thinking of upgrading to a telescope. The Dob caught my attention due to its simplicity in setup and also cost effectiveness. I was thinking of going for 8&quot; or 10&quot; Dob.
What I have also observed is - If I'm going to use dob, I need to keep moving the OTA frequently to keep the focus. If I'm going to use the dob alone, it is not an issue. But my concern is when I want to show the celestial objects to others, I need to frequently move the OTA to keep the objects in focus. It may become tiring if there are many people waiting to watch.
Has anyone encountered similar situation with dob? What are your thoughts? Did you ever feel that you should have gone for go-to mount instead of Dob? Any suggestions please?
An 8 or 10 inch Newtonian telescope is principally a fine thing. Much telescope for little money.
A Dobson is a Newtonian telescope mounted on a rockerbox (see Alt/Az mount for a discussion). Consequences are: cheap, lightweight, trivial setup, your're either on your knees or on a chair, too seldom in between, it needs constant adjustment because the sky doesn't move that way.
If you want to track stars you need an equatorial mount, a cross of 2 axes of which one points to the celestial north (or south) pole. The same tube from the Dobson can also be mounted there. They can be motorized on one or both axes or/and have a computer built in to automagically find an object out of a database, then they are decorated with the &quot;goto&quot; attribute.
They are heavy, expensive (multiple times the price of a newton tube) and need a setup ritual each time they are moved. But once oriented, a motorized mount, connected to some software and computer, can be left alone for hours and will track the stars it points to.

So, the question is: do I want it light and cheap and don't I care about gymnastics, then the Dob. Do I want to go further and track things, do photography, than the other way. Perhaps with a sexy apochromatic refractor. But that's easily more than 20 times the price of a dob without camera stuff.
I personally don't do goto. Finding things is half of the fun for me. I go with equatorial mounts, a small portable one and one for photography setup I can drag outside. How about, you start with the Dob. If you bite, you're going to invest more anyway :-)
Edit: there is a third way (and potentially others) that might be worth considering, that would be a telescope like the one in this thread, a small reflector mounted on a computerized alt/az mount.