Size of Jupiter? and saturn?

[cyroflame]

Hey guys, just went onto a website that was recommended for me by another member, it gives you a rough estimate of what objects will look like through your selected telescope and eyepiece (http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.htm)

However the planets appear to be very small!

can someone please show me what Saturn and Jupiter might actually look like through a scope with magnification of up x130?

many thanks mike.

[John]

This is not exact but you could expect something like this:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2589/3670598482_c1ff939329_b.jpg

Saturn is usually slightly smaller.

But this an approximation only.

[brianb]

can someone please show me what Saturn and Jupiter might actually look like through a scope with magnification of up x130?

Small!

Jupiter takes a magnification of about x40 to appear as big as the Moon does to the naked eye. Saturn is pretty much the same size - measured across the rings - the ball is obviously considerably smaller.

Don't forget that there is an illusion which makes things appear smaller when observed in a confined field of view (try looking at the moon through a cardboard tube).

But size (of image) isn't everything - a small but crisp image is preferable to a huge fuzzy one. x20 to x30 per inch of aperture is about as much as is useful, for most people, most of the time.

[Brinders]

Just tried it inputting my equipment set up and have to say Saturn looks about right for size to me, Mike. May even be a little optimistic (i.e. my image is a little smaller than the calculater would suggest).

Here is an example of Saturn I captured on April 4th 2010 using my Neximage (same chip as the Toucam Pro) attached to a Celestron CPC925GPS Skywatcher 2x ED barlow and TAL 2X barlow and the resulting image doubled to 200% for comparison:-

[John]

Brinders Saturn is what it looks like at around 400x in my 10" scope - not that I'm able to use that much power very often !.

[brianb]

Does of course depend on how big your screen is & how far away you are looking at it from.

Saturn is approx. 50 arc secs across the rings. That's 1/4000 radians ... say 1/4200 to make the arithmetic easier. x140 magnification makes it 1/30 ... i.e. 1 inch across viewed from 30 inches distance.