Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
I have tried smaller, decidedly faster optics, but all they seem to give me is a wider field...which can be great....but the details are lost for reasons I frankly don't fully understand, given the seeing ultimately is the limiting factor. 
I'd be very happy to receive some insight here...any takers? |
In my limited understanding, this
image says it all.
Small aperture quality optics is almost always diffraction limited (right) no matter how good the seeing is. A larger aperture is affected by a mixture of seeing and diffraction effects (middle), while largest apertures confidently resolve fine structures being always affected by the seeing only (left), and diffraction becomes negligible for our purposes. Even with seeing blurring the detail, DSO information is still of higher resolution.
I do understand this is a simplified approach but makes sense to me why large aperture resolves finer detail.
Image credit: R Nave, 2019