View Single Post
  #67  
Old 22-11-2013, 05:55 PM
Satchmo's Avatar
Satchmo
Registered User

Satchmo is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Sydney
Posts: 1,875
To be fair the error on Hubble mirror was 1/2 wave RMS - much greater than you will find on a lower end typical consumer scope .

There has been a thread on this before - but planetary imagers need focal lengths of 5 to 15 meters to literally oversample the airy pattern with pixels to exploit every bit of quality in their optics and detail possible in the image. Its all to do with pixel scale versus airy disc size vs. seeing . I think there would be few deep sky imaging rigs exploiting optical quality fully , but I do feel that the better the optics , the less havoc tilt and defocus of the wavefront due to seeing , will have on the FWHM. There is no doubt that the guys with known good optics that are well mounted and guided are coming up with the premiun images.
Reply With Quote