The Dobsonian's Effect On Amateur Astronomy
The inherent simplicity and large aperture of the design began to attract interest through the 1970s since it offered the advantage of inexpensive large instruments that could be carried to dark sky locations and even star parties in the back of a small car and set up in minutes. The result has been a proliferation of larger telescopes which would have been expensive to build or buy, and unwieldy to operate, using "traditional" construction methods. Whereas an 8-inch Newtonian telescope would have been considered large 30 years ago, today 16-inch systems are common, and huge 32-inch systems not all that rare.
In combination with other improvements such as narrow-pass filters and improved eyepieces, the large apertures of the Dobsonian have dramatically increased the depth to which an amateur astronomer can penetrate into the universe. Whereas the amateur astronomer of the 1970s and 1980s typically did not explore much beyond the Messier and brighter NGC objects, the amateur astronomer of today can routinely observe objects in the IC, Abell, Perek Kohoutek, Minkowski and other obscure catalogues once considered the domain of professional astronomers, thanks in part to Dobsonians.
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