Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman
When the seeing is not good, it doesn't matter how much aperture you have, all the stars star to blur together and do not resolve well.
When the seeing is very good, you can push the power up to 250x or more and start to resolve the inner core starts.
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Agreed, this is what I thought as well. My Genesis (100mm) is much less than 150 to 200mm, but it has no problem with globular resolution. It's not as bright as those bigger scopes, but then again contrast in the Genesis is superb. I don't think you necesarily need 150 to 200mm per se, I reckon you may have been limited by seeing with your 80mm, as IceMan says.
But its an interesting question, really what is the 'minimum' needed to resolve a typical globular. Cheers, Fox...
PS: Here's an interesting link to observing globulars. It mentions that 70mm can 'resolve' some globulars, a lot has to do with faintness of the cluster, so more aperture will help because of greater light gathering and not so much because the stars are 'close' together. Obviously with better seeing and dark skies, your 80mm will perform better.
http://www.ngcic.org/papers/gctext.htm