A quick search yields no hits in the past two months, so apologies if there’s an older but brilliant explanation.
I’m considering buying a telescope. My options are a 3.5" refractor from Celestron and a 6" Dobsonian from Orion. I’m not planning on doing any photography, but wouldn’t rule it out for the future. I’d mostly be looking at easily-found objects: comets, planets, and Messier objects, probably in that order.
I live in an urban area, so portability is somewhat of a concern. I might take it out to my in-laws’ house to get away from light pollution and tall houses in back of mine (which block out a decent chunk of the sky).
Pros of the 3.5" refractor, as I understand them:
weighs less
mount is more stable
for the same price, I can get one of those motor thingies to track objects
Like excercise equipment, they cost alot, get used religiously for about a month or two, then collect dust/hang bras in a corner for the rest of thier life.
I bought an 8" Dob from Orion about 6 years ago and it is still a wonderful workhorse. It’s a bit cumbersome to take on outings, but I’ve got a wagon.
I can understand the temptation to get a motorized mount, but if you’re interested in looking at things that are outside of our solar system (i.e. most everything) then you probably don’t want a refractor. You didn’t mention the biggest “pro” of the reflector: cost per light gathering optical area. When you’re scanning the sky with your hand pushing the cardboard tube of a cheap Dob, there’s nothing more gratifying than the rich clusters of starlight that are entering your eyeballs for such a paltry expense.
My first “real” scope was a 8" DOB (from Discovery). I still have it and it was great for comets, Messiers, and okay for the planets. It was a lot of fun finding all the Messiers! I thought the price difference from the 6" to 8" wasn’t much so I opted for the 8. I could haul it around easy enough, as long as it fits in the back seat. There are a lot more deep sky objects to find and I think a DOB works great for finding them. No photography though.
Discovery is a Calif telescope company that actually makes them in the US, or did when I bought mine 5 years ago. I have read good reports for the Orion, Meade, Celestron Chinese made DOBs.
Since you’re in the Bay Area, check the Astronomical Society of the Pacific http://www.astrosociety.org/. They probably have local star parties or sidewalk astronomy or can direct you to some. That’ll at least give you an idea of what can be seen from your area.
There was at one time a group of amateurs who met at the Lawrence Hall of Science on Saturday evenings to let people look through their scopes. I don’t know if this still occurs or if they were also from the ASP.
And just Googling will turn up a lot of stuff.
If you intend to use your scope in a darker area for better viewing, then as Gatopescado said, you’ll find the inconvenience at least will mean you won’t use the scope as much as you thought. Instead, try to locate a star party in a darker area.
If you do buy a scope, the reflector is the way to go. Through the star parties you might get a deal from someone who made their own scope and wants to sell it. Buyer beware, of course.
Thanks everyone for the comments. I’m going to check out the two links that were posted, but to clarify my choice and respond to a few random comments:
(1) I’m not interested in building my own scope. The telescope is actually a Christmas gift from my wife that I’m only getting around to buying now that the weather is clearing up.
(2) My wife is a morning person and not super-interested in going out in the middle of the night. Ideally (for her), I would find something cool to see, she can roll out of bed, take a quick peek, and then go back to sleep. It’s actually for this reason that we’re buying a scope and not just driving out to Mt. Diablo to mooch off of others (which I advocated).
(3) I actually have gone on several astronomy outings before and I’ve used both reflectors and refractors. People have been very helpful in giving suggestions on which to buy - actually, a little too helpful. First of all, I’m not very experienced, so honestly, at this point, I can’t tell if I have chromatic aberration. Secondly, people generally try to point out all the benefits of both and are kind of hard to pin down on recommendations for one telescope. Same with a lot of Google links - the most knowledgable people seem to be the most non-committal.
Biased answers are actually the most helpful at this point (assuming I didn’t miss any big pros or cons).
