knowledge vs. devices

[phaishazamkhan]

I want to know if there's any kind of elitism in astronomy circles where someone who relies upon a go-to telescope, either you say "Find Saturn" or key in Saturn is thought of as being lazy or naive compared to someone who can easily find any of the bright stars and in about five minutes get their telescope or binoculars trained on that point for their uninitiated friends.
Also do any hardcore astronomers use these automated devices simply for the convenience?

[tony873004]

The fastest way to tour the sky is with a Dobsonian telescope. If you know where objects are located, it only takes a few seconds to point the telescope to the object.

But GOTO can be useful for finding Uranus and Neptune, as well as objects whose positions you are not familiar with. Also, a GOTO telescope tracks the sky for you after it arrives.

[cbacba]

I want to know if there's any kind of elitism in astronomy circles where someone who relies upon a go-to telescope, either you say "Find Saturn" or key in Saturn is thought of as being lazy or naive compared to someone who can easily find any of the bright stars and in about five minutes get their telescope or binoculars trained on that point for their uninitiated friends.
Also do any hardcore astronomers use these automated devices simply for the convenience?

There's always elitism and a level of groupie mentality in the realm of human endeavors. I'd say the level in general is quite small in this case. Visual astronomers pride themselves on knowledge of the sky and their ability to find whatever quickly. Also, with visual, eyepieces are quite important as is light gather capability. In this area, the dobsonian offers the biggest bang for the buck, with some amateurs having up to 36" portable dob telescopes.

Imaging is a bit of a different world. Larger telescopes are not needed for this but very accurate tracking and usually guiding are necessary. In my case, imaging and the use of a laptop computer tends to keep my eyes from reaching full night vision so finding stuff manually can be very difficult. Imaging usually involves much narrower fields of view, making manual finding much more difficult. Finally, objects to be imaged are often very dim, some beyond the realm of visual imaging, even with much larger telescopes. As such, I find having a goto scope much preferred. Also, I haven't developed the finding skills such as needed for operating a manual dob.

What's more, I can knock out an image of an object dimmer than the best visual observer can find and see in about the same amount of time they might take to reach the point where they think they have found it. And, mine will show much better detail and even be in color while they will see some nondescript greyish fuzzy thing. Ultimately, I can even show them - or anyone else what it looks like and make a copy to hang on the wall as well. When you can do that, it doesn't matter what some elitist might say.

I'd also state that at a decent sized gathering of the hardcore dedicated amateurs will probably have around 50% goto scopes.

Note too that digital setting circles and even goto options can be had for moderate sized dobs.

Ultimately, it depends on your own preferences, intended uses and budget.

[mugaliens]

The fastest way to tour the sky is with a Dobsonian telescope. If you know where objects are located, it only takes a few seconds to point the telescope to the object.

But GOTO can be useful for finding Uranus and Neptune, as well as objects whose positions you are not familiar with. Also, a GOTO telescope tracks the sky for you after it arrives.

I'm partial to a rotating (for time) and slipping (for latitude) 12" "pocket" star chart I picked up around 20 years ago.

Of course it doesn't help you with the planets, but I've learned to spot Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn just by scanning the sky - they look that different and out of place compared to the stars.