I have a 3 inch refractor, and a 6 inch Newtonian. One thing to know about Telescopes is that they are like guns. You know how everyone always says that the BEST gun to have in a gunfight is the gun you have with you? Well, it's sort of the same with telescopes.
If you buy a huge 8 inch light bucket that takes 4 people to move, what's the (real) chances that you are going to lug it up onto the roof just because Saturn is supposed to be visible at a nice angle tonight? I personally would like a bigger scope (than my 6 incher) to MAYBE get into Astral photography. On the other hand, my 6 incher is just small enough for me to lug up the damned stairs because of (pick one):
1. OH! Hey! There's Venus!
2. Say, is that Saturn? (After long enough, and I've had telescopes for about 40 years now -- and I'm 52, you get to sort of recognize a lot of stuff for WHERE it is in the sky, WHEN it is in the sky, etc., etc. .)
3. Wow! There's Jupiter! Right beside the moon! That's worth a look!
4. Orion's Belt looks bright tonight. (There is a "star factory" just under the middle star of Orion's belt.)
5. What's that up there? Is that frickin' MARS??? (Which, no matter how many emails you receive saying otherwise, will NEVER appear as big as a dime in the night sky no matter how frickin' close the Earth and Mars are in their respective orbits over the next -- or last -- 50,000 years.)
...and any other number of things that might make one decide, on a nice night (I'd say summer night, but here where I am you can get "nice" nights on any particular month of the year) to lug the thing up those stairs.
I mean, some guy with a huge 8 or 10 inch light bucket that costs thousands of dollars (that I can't afford) might not get the viewing time I get with my 350.00 dollar 6 incher that I bought at Costco ten years back. Why? Because I'll carry mine up the damned stairs if I see something up there while I ride my motorcycle home in the evening that might be worth a peek.
Things you should look for are: well, you don't need an expensive mount for photography if you aren't going to get into Astral photography. I have had telescopes since I was 11 or so, and I have done SOME moon photography (which was really a bummer, because all my stupid friends said "WOW!!! GREAT SHOT OF THE MOON! WHO TOOK THAT???" They didn't believe me when I told them that I took it by hooking up an old Canon SLR camera to the lens adapter and then to the Telescope adapter and did a slightly delayed exposure with 400 film. I'd love to get into digital astral photography, but I don't even HAVE a digital camera, so I'm one to talk.). But I've never got into Astral stuff, with digital cameras and equatorial mounts and stuff like that. I mean, that's an expensive hobby, and I'd rather buy guns and primers and stuff, so it's just not practical to do anything more than dream about it.
AND, if you don't go the "photo hog" route, you have more choices in viewing scopes. You can get a great scope for the 500.00 bucks you talk about spending. You CAN'T touch Astral Photography for 500.00 bucks, but you CAN get great viewing scopes to impress the wife, kids, next-door-neighbours etc., etc. . Saturn NEVER fails to impress. Jupiter same-same. The moon is pretty fantastic on the right night. Full moons aren't so great, they are too bright, you need filters. But a half or quarter moon is something to see close-up.
Go get some "Sky and Telescope" issues, and start reading them. Learn your way around the night sky, and remember: you will NOT see the same thing through your back-yard telescope that they see through the Hubble. If you could, they wouldn't have had to dump all that money into the Hubble. All those colors and hues, they come out over long-exposure photography with time-exposure mounts that compensate for the Earth's rotation. (Everytime I say "Earth", I think of my old Ukrainian Geography teacher from high-school -- dead for a decade now -- who used to tell us in his homeland accent "Put me ANYVHERE on dis here Oit an' I vill fine my vay home.") There are other Astonomy magazines as well. Most of them have a "Worth looking at this month" column. Some of them divide the column up amongst stuff that is worth seeing with Binos, small scopes, big scopes, and deep space photography scopes so you can sort out whether or not you want to look at stuff.
I have enjoyed looking at the stars. One night, many years ago when I was on a boat that was "lost upon the water", the fact that I was the ONLY one on board who had looked at the sky just as it was getting dark and saw a star I recognized above a point on distant land was the ONLY thing that allowed me to convince the "expert" crew that they were heading the wrong way completely and that land was "over there, schmucks."
One night, some bigshot was trying to impress the local girls with the "isn't Venus beautiful tonight?" schtick. I couldn't resist pointing out that, as "Venus is CLOSER to the sun than we are, it never appears so high over head on the elliptic...and if you had a telescope you'd know that was in fact Jupiter. Venus is over there, and won't be visible for a few hours yet." That sort of thing can make you unpopular with the dorks, but the chicks sort of love it.
Get some big-ass binoculars (Lee won't kick me for that will he?) around the 10 x 50 size. You want BIG LENSES to gather light. That's why they call big telescopes "light buckets". They gather light. Personally, I pooh-pooh computer controlled star finders (I mean, really, can't you find the thing yourself???) however star charts and computer star-finder programs are cool. A sort of "what's out there tonight?"
I think refractors are limiting, but for close-up stuff they are cool and give you solid images. I like my Newtonian reflector, it gives just BOSS images of Saturn to the naked eye, and Jupiter too. I wish it was bigger...but then again, I might not haul it up the stairs if it were.
I have read that the Dobsonian reflectors give you more size (diameter inches) for the price, and for just naked eye viewing, that might be worth consideration. It's a great hobby. Like guns, you will spend the rest of your life playing with it and still come away feeling stupid. However...you will often find, once you get started, that trying to have a SERIOUS conversation about the stars gets difficult after only a short time because nobody else around you can figure out what the hell you are talking about.
(That's an astrologer, or rogue, IHMO.)
