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Below is a quote from Dennis Persyk, on one of the lists I belong to. Personally, I have seen stars to mag 2 quite easily in an 8" reflector and with the same instrument Alpha Centauri was a beautiful sight.
Terry
Quote by Dennis Persyk
"I do a fair amount of daylight observing at noontime with my C-11 on a goto mount. My visual observations seem to conflict with your calculations. I assume you will concede that if I can see a star, I can easily image it with my digital camera with just one frame."
"What I note is that the visual limiting magnitude is a strong function of the angular distance of the star from the sun. Not surprising, is it? Mie and Raleigh scattering are highly angular dependent. I also have an easier time seeing stars (and planets) at noon with larger apertures than smaller apertures – I missed how you accounted for the aperture effect in your calculations."
"From my observing log of Sept 7, 2003, 10:57 am local time: I see Regulus, magnitude 1.36, very clearly, with the PanOptic 19 mm eyepiece. Regulus was degrees, 11 minutes from the sun."
"Moving to greater angular distance from the sun, I easily see Izar, Epsilon Bootes, at magnitude 2.35 with an angular separation of 55 degrees, 52 minutes from the sun. The farther from the sun, the dimmer the star I can see."
"I also observed the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn. I set out to image these objects with the digital camera, but instead just enjoyed visually observing them. Besides, imaging bright (in the eyepiece) stars seemed a bit like shooting fish in a barrel – no sport."
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