NEAF 2024 Celestron StarSense Explorer Dob - Lance Lucero

Rob speaks with Lance Lucero from Celestron about the StarSense Explorer tabletop Dobsonian telescopes. Lance walks Rob through the main features of the StarSense Explorer and they both share stories of their experience as leaders of outreach groups where they share their personal passion for astronomy with the public. One thing is for sure, Celestron's StarSense Explorer Tabletop Dob is one of my favorite scopes right now.
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[@T.K.9]

I have the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 102AZ, and it is definitely very good. You just have to aim it to a target manually. And the catalog of targets it has, is a lot!
And the fact that you can read information about the objects/target or let it talk to you.

[@prkroon]

As a beginner I doubt if I should go for the Starsense 150mm Tabletop dob or Starsense Explorer 8 inch dob as the latter has an excellent score for observing DSO's, planets & moon while the 150mm tabletop version has a score of good for these objects. Also the fact that my home location is not a very sky friendly observing location due to nearby objects and light polution I have to take the scope into the car and go to a more friendly observing location.
The portability of the 8 inch is more cumbersome then the 150mm tabletop dob and I can also buy the additional tabletop tripod so I am not dependent of a table 🙂
So the question is: Is a 150mm tabletop dob still suffiecient for (dimmed) DSO's & planets or should I definitely go for the 8 inch (grounded) dob?

[@CosmosSafari]

I personally like an 8 inch, and once you add the tripod they are comparable in size.

[@prkroon]

@@CosmosSafari Thanks for the quick response. Personally I like the 6 inch version as I could put it on a table if I want to. However the weight is for me an issue (34 lbs = 15.4 kg vs 44 lbs = 20kg) if you have to carry the seperate parts from car to the observation location if this location is not nearby the parking lot. The additional tripod for the 6 inch tabletop is folded so easy to carry. The main question for me is the view of DSO's and planets. It is obvious that clarity is less in the 6 inch then in the 8 inch but will this be a remarkable issue when looking at sky objects? I do not want to blame myself afterwards that I did not buy the 8 inch instead of the 6 inch. Can you say something about this?