Hey Ivan

I'm with “akarsh” on this one... recent news reports about the Western propensity for sitting for large parts of the day contributing to increased risk of cancer and heart disease has me thinking that I don’t want my favourite hobby contributing to my demise. Sitting works well with refractors and SCTs, where the observer is behind the telescope and the eyepiece, using a star diagonal, can easily be rotated to a comfortable viewing position. But with reflectors.... I stand for 90% of my observing sessions. I will occasionally use a chair if I am observing objects that are lower than about 45-50 degrees above the horizon. Objects that are “deep south” from my location (for instance in Scorpius or Sagittarius) I use a technique I call “grovelling” which requires me to get down on my hands and knees to get at the telescope eyepiece. While there praying, I often ask myself how I ever ended up in this hobby, especially as the knees of my trousers soak up the dewy ground! When observing with chairs I find myself shifting the chair several times during the course of an observing session as I try to avoid the eyepiece putting a serious dent in my eye socket. When I’ve used ladders with larger telescopes (e.g.: 25-inch f/5s), I can't count the number of times I’ve had to shift the ladder during the session, either to keep tracking the object or to shift to another part of the sky. The freedom of having your feet firmly planted to the ground with a mid-sized Dob (like my current 18-inch f/4.5) cannot be overstated. So easy to adjust as I follow an object across the sky or move on to something else. If I got a larger Dob down the road, the first thing that goes overboard is focal ratio. If I upgraded to, say, a 22-inch, I'd go with an f/4. 25-inch... hello f/3.5! While sitting undeniably contributes positively to remaining relaxed while observing, the negatives of shifting a ladder around (especially on grass) outweigh that consideration in my opinion.