A great scope for deep sky viewing and more - Celestron Advanced VX 8in Newtonian Telescope

This is an excellent telescope for deep sky viewing, astrophotography, etc. I have an adapter for my Sony DSLR and have taken great images of the planets with this. The mount is of high quality and the tripod is sturdy. This is my first ever "big" telescope (I had a small refractor as a child, not computerized), though, so I have nothing really to compare it with. There are certainly more expensive options out there that probably have better gears and such, but at this price, this is an outstanding value.

The only things I'd recommend would be a battery pack of some kind, and possibly considering the StarSense Align accessory, or the polar alignment accessory.