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Interesting question.
I've found larger apertures do have intrinsically higher resolutions, plus exhibit less positional wander (due air-cell induced tip-tilt) in the location of stars at the focal plane.
This comes at a cost, stars look like fuzzballs most nights... eg big fuzzies on bad nights, and teeny fuzzies on good ones.
I've also found guiding adaptively makes a *big* difference on nights where the seeing is good.
FWHM's can easily be reduced by 30% or more with AO's.
The big edge professional observatories have is their high-altitude locations almost always have excellent seeing and transparency...
Even non-professionals have been taking this altitude advantage of late...look no further than Martin's world beating results taken from Sierra Remote.
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