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I don't see why you need a bigger scope!

Ags

By Ags
in The Astro Lounge

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Ags

Ags

Posted
Posted

I took my partner to a star party recently, and the resonse was: "I don't see why you need a bigger scope! I looked through the big ones at the party and the moon and Jupiter looked the same..."

What can I say? I tried to point out that the big newt was obviously miscollimated, the big SCT was looking at Jupiter through a tree, and the other newt wasn't using a very high mag so of course the moon looked the same.

I do have agreement to get a better mount, so I'll get NEQ6 Pro and stick my ST80 on it!

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John

John

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Globular clusters are really impressive when you put some aperture on them. Even with my modest 10" newtonian M13 and M92 are fully resolved and really are starting to look like photos of these objects. You just can't get that sort of resolution with small aperture scopes.

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JoLo

JoLo

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The universe is expanding rapidly...never heard that one for justifying a bigger scope, but it's perfect. May I borrow that one Steve?

Hope she doesn't find out about Andromeda moving toward us, and filling half the night sky in 3 billion years.....will take the sails out of my (your) expanding universe justification.

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John

John

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I've viewed M13 with a 20" dobsonain (A lovely David Lukehurst one) and it really did look like that !.

M51 was even more stunning !

The scope would take up the whole of our garage though so it's a non-starter to own one of my own :)

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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You should answer:

"Your shoes are all the same size, why do you want more?"

I made a bit of a joke along these lines at the weekend. my wife called our daughter who was upstairs to ask her to bring down my wife's brown suede ankle boots with a fur lining and leather laces. my response was you'll have to narrow it down as you have three pairs like that!! :)

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umadog

umadog

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It's been a while since I compared views of M13 in different scopes side by side, but overall I'd say that graphic is fairly accurate. It's not a wildly misleading marketing stunt, if that's what you're asking. Of course, it does matter how high in the sky the object is and how much light pollution there is. Last time I saw M13 in my 18", it was low in the sky and the moon was full. What I saw probably looked worse than that 8" representation. The perception of brightness depends strongly on contrast, so dark skies will always help.

The views of M13 are by no means disappointing in an 8" or 10" scope, though, so don't let that put you off. You won't want a >15" scope as your only instrument anyway, so you may as well but the 8" now. Here's another comparison page for M51: http://www.clarkvision.com/visastro/m51-apert/index.html The 8" impression doesn't look so different from this other 8" impression: http://www.deepskywatch.com/images/sketches/M51-whirlpool-galaxy-Sketch.jpg

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