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Old 04-06-2010, 07:11 PM
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Robh (Rob)
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Blue Mountains, Australia
Posts: 1,338
For today's larger amateur scopes like a 16 inch, it's too easy. The scopes of today have more accurately defined mirrors and better coatings so the test doesn't really mean much.
An 8 inch scope or bigger should easily pick up the six stars provided collimation is good and skies are reasonably dark. Skyglow and transparency are probably more important factors in discerning the two 11th magnitude stars.
A better test would be to see whether you can split a reasonably close double star in good seeing e.g. the system nu Scorpii, a double-double, with component magnitudes 4.4/5.3 separated by 1.2 arcsecs and 6.6/7.2 separated by 2.3 arcsecs. Can you split either pair. The two doubles themselves are easily separated, 41 arcsecs apart. Of course, the larger the aperture, the easier it is.

Regards, Rob
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