Our eyes don't see color very well at low illumination. A small good
quality scope (say 60mm) that can get to 30X is sufficient to show a
ring around Saturn. But to see Casini's division (in the rings) and any
other detail you'll need something fairly large. A 6" to 8" scope will
give good images of Jupiter and Saturn. Casini's division is well
within the range of a 6" and probably even a 4-1/4". An 8" can even
show a little bit of color in Jupiter's belts if the seeing is good and
you've got a very dark location. Otherwise a 10" is required to get a
good color view of Jupiter. A 10" and especially a 12" will be able to
show the subtle pastel colors of Jupiter's belts just about any time.
Mars is always red/orange and sometimes the polar caps are visible as
white. Even at 100-150X it's pretty tiny in the eyepiece. An 8" scope
gathers enough light to support higher magnification than that but the
air (anywhere I've ever lived) hasn't ever been cooperative enough to
get anything out of the higher magnification. Just to be clear I own an
8" Celestron and it's most commonly used at 80X or 125X. Actually, the
skies around Boston are so bad for telescopes that it's hardly ever been
used in the past 10 years.
Chuck Norcutt
priit@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> For quality photos of Saturn you'd need a very expensive and huge
> telescope. Also, there are limits what you can do from the ground due to
> the properties of the atmosphere, this is why there are several telescopes
> operating from space.
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