To track, or not to track, THAT is the question

Well, it's my question, at least for the moment.

Last night I did another test run to the Audubon sanctuary, thinking about the type of public programs I might do there and at Horseneck campground. This time I brought an 8-inch DOB.

That meant I could set up in 3 minutes - about one third the time it takes to be ready to observe with the 5-inch Clestron "go to" package. That's good.

As I popped around to major targets - Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon, Antares, the Double Double, Albireo, M57 - it was very clear to me that just about anything I wanted to show people I could find faster on my own without using digital setting circles, or a "go to" mechanism. BUT . .. the beauty of the automatic scopes lies in the tracking. Saturn, low in the west, slipped out of the field of view in little over a minute. That means my user will either have to learn to move the scope themselves - hardly rocket science - to keep something in view, or I will need to look in and move it for them.

Keeping in mind that my public programs are not star parties and involve small groups, this may or may not be practical. I need to experiment. The simplicty of using the Dobs really appeals to me. The question is, will they work in the situations I envision, or do I really need tracking? Or maybe a mixture of both types of scopes?

This, btw, isn't the same as my set-up at the Observatory. Complicating matters there is I frequently set up scopes that are out of my sight - and 50 or more feet away from the scopes that are tracking. That's a different environment then setting up perhaps three or four scopes real close to one another for a maximum of 10 people to use.

I guess the only way I'll resolve this is by experimenting - by doing the programs with the Dobs and seeing how it works. But among other things I really like the idea that I can unpack and set up three scopes in 10 minutes.