I'm just starting this great hobby which one is better the Orion skyquest xt8 or the spaceprobe 130st Thanks

The thing about telescopes is none are perfect. Each has its pros and cons and you should buy the one that suits your needs best depending on what type of viewing you hope to do. They are both good beginner telescopes and being relatively large reflectors, you will be able to see plenty of great stuff. I will compare them for you so that you can make a good decision.The XT8 is a Dobsonian meaning it sits on the ground so there is no tripod to lug around and care for. If you are tall then you will have to bend over to look through the Dobs eyepiece unless you bring a large crate or surface to set it on. Also, the XT8 has what is called an altazimuth mount. This means you can only move the telescope up/down and rotate left/right. You'd think that is all is needed, but this makes even finding objects difficult and tracking (or staying on them as you view) even more difficult if not impossible for a beginner. On the other hand, the Spaceprobe comes with what is known as an equatorial mount. With a slight learning curve you can avoid the extraordinary hassle of dealing with an altazimuth mount by simply aligned the Spaceprobe to the north star ONCE (at the start of each and every viewing session) and then finding and tracking stars and objects is very very easy and effortless. It allows you to not even have to think about the issue of tracking objects. In case you aren't aware, when you view objects you have to move the telescope ever so slightly to keep it in view, because as the Earth moves the object appears to move out of view. It gets more pronounced at higher magnification. That is why I brought up this issue and compared the two scopes. Frankly, for this issue I would recommend the Spaceprobe. However, both of these can be fitted with a computerized motor, although I don't know how the XT8 would use one, which would make finding and tracking objects not an issue at all, but it costs a lot to upgrade them like this. Lastly, note that most people will say that EQ mounts are only necessary for astrophotography, but I honestly disagree for the above reasons. I've had both alt./az. and EQ mounts and I'll never use an alt./az. mount again, but that is just me. Now, lets look at the next topic.Dobsonians usually have a large focal length and that is the case here. Although the SkyQuest does come in a 6 inch as well as an 8 inch while the SpaceProbe has 5.1 inches. When it comes to reflectors, the aperture is what matters most. A larger aperture will gather more light and so in principle you can see fainter objects more easily with an 8 inch aperture. Since area goes like the square of radius, the 8 inch will gather 2.46 times more light. Since I don't know the focal length of the XT8 I can't compare their focusing and fastness capabilities. Also, try to never get a spherical primary mirror. The Spaceprobe has a longer (ie not the ST which stands for short tube) version--the 130 EQ--which uses a spherical mirror but has a longer tube. The 130ST has a parabolic primary mirror which is much better than a spherical one. You get cleaner more crisp images since you avoid spherical aberration. Now, bigger isn't always better. There are several things which will limit what you can see. The first is light pollution. If you live in or anywhere near a city, big or small, you won't be able to use much of the power that either can offer. You can always travel 30-45 minutes away from the city and that should be good enough to do some great viewing. I stay in my backyard and that is fine for viewing the moon and bright planets, but anything else would be hard to do. Secondly, there is the problem of "seeing". The atmosphere rarely stands still. There are so many layers of atmosphere at different temperatures and humidity that it causes a shimmering or shaking. The proverbial twinkle twinkle little star is actually a curse to astronomers. The twinkle is caused by the shaky atmosphere. If you try to pump up the power of either scope, but especially the bigger XT8, you will get a blurry blob of what could have been beautiful. On great nights, you can see a lot of amazing stuff with both scopes (Jupiter shows its gas bands and the 4 Galilean moons, Saturn and its amazing rings are clearly visible with the Cassini division too and some of its moons like Titan, the moon is exquisite with not just craters and mountain ranges, but also the texture is amazing. The Spaceprobe made me feel like I was hovering over the moon at just a half a mile because I could see so much detail). If you have great seeing and go far from the city, then you can probably notice a little bit of a difference between the two scopes, but if you are a beginner then I highly doubt that you could tell the difference or even know what to look for to discern a difference. With deep sky objects the XT8 in principle will make them seem a litter bigger, but not by much. It will gather more light, but not so much that the nebulae or galaxy looks like it does in famous Hubble images. In fact, unless you become a well-versed astrophotographer there is no telescope you can buy as a beginner that will show you large bright colorful images of nebulae and galaxies. I looked through my Spaceprobe at the Orion nebulae--as an astrophysicist and well seasoned night sky observer I knew what to expect. What I saw was a faint greyish green blob. I could make out that I was looking at a nebulae, but in darkness the eye is incapable of discerning color from faint objects. If you want great pictures of nebulae and galaxies then it takes a LOT of learning and practice and MONEY, but eventually you can use filters and trackers and special cameras to do long exposures and get a compiled image of a DSO which is significantly more beautiful than you can see with your eye. Only in that case would it really matter having a larger Dobsonian instead of the spaceprobe. There is so much more to discuss, but I think I will summarize now. The slightly smaller Spaceprobe will require some slight learning (you have to polar align it every time you view, but it gets super easy after the first 4 tries), but when you get used to that it becomes very convenient since as you view you simply tweak the RA nob and you are ready to keep absorbing the celestial beauty. Once you get any object in view you are going to want to stare at it and stare at it because you can't look away from its awesomeness. So I just keep my hand on the RA nob and tweak it slightly every few seconds to keep it in the middle of the eyepiece. The XT8 I don't think has this ability unless you upgrade it to have a tracker if it even can do that I don't know. That is the only thing I don't know for sure about the XT8 by the way. The tripod makes it easier to be stable and look through if you are tall, but then it is more of a nuisance to carry around whereas the TX8 is more compact and can be carried in a special bag. You can see plenty with BOTH and what you see is highly highly dependent on how good the atmospheric conditions are and where you live. However, under the most ideal circumstances you might be able to get slightly more brightness from the XT8 due to its larger aperture and longer focal length. In terms of stunning views of DSOs, they will both seem very similar to the beginner's eye and the full potential of the XT8 won't be realized without lots of special extra gear like trackers, filters, and cameras. Both of these could make good scopes for beginning astrophotographers which is a great way to develop. Photography is difficult but very rewarding and both scopes have the ability to become good astrophotography scopes, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. In conclusion, I would say that I only can give the information off the top of my head and you should do more research. But in the end all you need to know is what do you want from a telescope? What type of things do you want to see and do you live in a place where there are city lights? Clouds are very often present like northern California? Or fog? Smog? Any of these could derail all of your plans for easy viewing and the atmosphere is unpredictable and you just have to know how to deal with what you are dealt (i.e. you have to know what eyepiece you should use based off of poor atmosphere, medium, average, or great atmospheric conditions). If you know what you want from a scope, that will help you determine which pros and cons matter most/least to you in each case. Good luck and I wish you many clear skies! Let me know if you have any more questions!

Can you see stars with this telescope

Depends on what you mean by "see stars". If you want to see details in distant stars or discern some kind of size, NO. All optical telescopes will resolve stars to point-like light sources. You should be able to see the color of a star more clearly, like the red of Betelgeuse or blue of Rigel. You could also see both stars in binary pairs, but you will not see any more detail than point-like light sources of various colors.

What is the maximum magnification of this telescope?

Magnification is the focal length of the scope (in this case 650mm) divided by the focal length of the eyepiece. The shortest included eyepiece is 10mm. So with what's included the maximum is 65x. If you get shorter eyepieces or a barlow you can easily more than double that.But you'll rarely use such high magnification. Atmospheric distortions become very visible at high magnifications. It has to be a pretty clear evening for me to even WANT that much power. (On most nights the limiting factor is the viewing conditions, not the telescope...)

Can you see the surface of mars with this?

In a short answer, no. But let me explain. Under the best viewing conditions, this telescope is powerful enough to view Mars. You will see the red disk resolved and perhaps some fuzzy white blotches at the North and South poles, indicating the polar ice caps...again if the time is right. Even superpowerful telescopes can't do much better than that so keep that in mind. This is a great telescope.

Coating	Lens coating
Focal Length Description	650 millimeters
Zoom Ratio	24
Finderscope	Reflex
Compatible Devices	Smartphone
Eye Piece Lens Description	Plossl
Mount	Equatorial Mount
Focus Type	Manual Focus
Item Weight	24.2 Pounds
Exit Pupil Diameter	0.2 Millimeters
Objective Lens Diameter	1.3E+2 Millimeters
Item Dimensions D x W x H	24"D x 24"W x 51"H
Optical-Tube Length	24 Inches

Orion SpaceProbe 130ST Equatorial Reflector Telescope for the Serious Adult Astronomy Beginner - Portable Telescope for Stargazing & Deep-sky Objects

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