Barlow? Crop? Drizzle?

[Andrew*]

I've been checking out the FOV with 450D/120ED combination and it seems some objects won't be all that big on the chip, and I was wondering what's the best way to frame smaller objects better with this scope.

Using a barlow would increase the exposure time quite a lot. Cropping wouldn't increase the resolution. Drizzling I know hardly anything about.

So how do you do wise folks do it? (Apart from using a larger scope...)

Andrew

[jgs001]

Andrew, I've tried both cropping and drizzling, with the 450d the effect seems to be the same (http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/88143-m51-reworked.html the first is cropped, the second a x2 drizzle). As far as barlowing is concerned, a TC would probably be a better bet as it doesn't alter focus and is designed to work with the camera, but has the dramatic effect on the increase in exposure time.

And then there's some that really just aren't worth trying... I had a bash at M64 earlier this year and it was so small in the frame as to be a fuzzie, cropping didn't really help as the resolution wasn't there to start with.

[jgs001]

I've had a play around just now with 3x drizzle, and I don't think it's much different from cropping the image in further.