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Re: [APML] Planets and focal length



Hi Rex:
What you can see through an eyepiece and what you can see on a negative shot at prime focus are amazingly different, at least for me. Visually, an 800 mm scope with a 5 or even 10 mm eyepiece will give you very obvious rings. Prime focus photography with the same 800 mm scope will give you what Covington's equations show: about 0.2 mm for the entire planet-ring system. With really fine grain film, you might be able to pull some detail out, but it won't be easy. (BTW, for rough estimates, Saturn with rings is about equal in diameter to Jupiter.) You should really go with eyepiece projection if your prime scope is 800 mm. And don't forget the seeing factor---when doing visual, your brain is rejecting the blurred periods of seeing and registering the sharper moments. Film just captures what's there at the moment and usually it's blurry (:-((  ).
Bert
 
Bert Katzung
katzung1@attbi.com
www.astronomy-images.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Rex Moore
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 11:29 AM
Subject: [APML] Planets and focal length

I asked someone off-list about the difficulties of photographing planets with short focal lengths. I saw a table in Covington's book (p. 75) that described the size of Jupiter on 35mm film with various focal lengths. At 1000mm FL, Jupiter is only 0.2mm in size. At 800 FL and below, Covington says "--"... or too small to measure.
 
I'm guessing from this it's hard to even see the rings of Saturn at 800mm and below?
 
Thanks,
 
Rex