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Old 02-March-2008, 05:02 AM
RickJ RickJ is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Mantrap Lake, MN
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Quote:
Originally Posted by spaceboy0 View Post
I want to see the rings of Saturn with just my 35 mm camera and tripod. I used 400 mm FL and all I get is a dot. If I use 1600 mm FL I can't see a damn thing through all the lenses stacked together!

Am I better off just photographing through my 8 inch scope for Saturn?
That's like asking; "If I want to fly to Paris should I flap my arms or take a plane?

With an 8" with barlow to extend it to a 6000mm focal length you should get good results photographically with a web cam. Though without a drive you may need to cut that back and settle for a pretty small Saturn. Visually it will be spectacular in an 8" scope of reasonable quality.

Though I did once attach a 10mm eyepiece to the 400mm lens that took the M31 shot I posted in this thread. It showed a very tiny Saturn at 40x with a heck of a lot of color fringing. Color correction wasn't up to that task. I could see the rings however.

Rick
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