As usual the questions we ask only serve to expose our ignorance, but I won't make progress unless I ask, and it might help someone else as well. I have been trying to wade through some of the articles on Seeing, Resolution and Aperture relationships and limitations, with a view to trying to understand the impact these have on imaging. Most recently I looked through this one:
http://www.telescope-optics.net/seeing_and_aperture.htm
As an old guy with not much real grasp of the mathematics of all this, can someone point me to a 'Dummy's Guide' to the subject of 'Seeing', Resolution and what it practically means to imaging?
For example, I often hear (or read about) that above 8" of aperture 'Seeing' is the limiting factor, and there are some good diagrams that illustrate this, but only through increasing apreture do we achieve greater resolution. At least this seems to be true visually, but is it the same for imaging. I was doing some imaging last night with my RC08, and using the scope visually, with an EP, I could see that the 'Seeing' was not great and that there was atmospheric trubulence affecting my Airy Disc. Switching over to the DSLR in Liveview the same star looked ok at the un-magnified setting, at 5X it was starting to exhibit shape change and at 10x it was dancing and swimming around. And yet, when I ran some five minute subs they looked ok. Now is this because of the resolution limits of my little RC or is this irrelevant to imaging.
I contemplate moving up to a 10" RC (chasing better resolution) but is this realistic if the 'Seeing' is thus impacting what I can produce. Will increased focal length and aperture (resolution) just give me more exposure to bad seeing?