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Old 11-05-2020, 11:33 AM
glend (Glen)
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Lake Macquarie
Posts: 7,121
I have been doing some reading on the subject of Diffraction Limited optical systems, and ran across references to Extending Numerical Aperture, which is achieved in Microscopes via side illumination, which can improve resolution by a factor of almost 2x. My source is here, good old Wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff...limited_system

If extension of aperture is workable in Microscopes, why not planetary observation, where illumination of the rings comes from, not just direct solar lighting, but reflection from the planetary body, which for Earth based observers, is effectively side illumination?

So moving to a planet albedo, there are two kinds, the directly lit one, and the reflected one, or Geometric and Bond. In the case of Saturn, it's Geometric albedo is nominaly 0.50, and the Bond albedo is 0.34.

Can the existence of this reflected albedo (Bond) improve our ability to resolve the Encke Gap, beyond that available through the diffraction point limit of our telescope?

Last edited by glend; 11-05-2020 at 11:08 PM.
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