Thursday, February 23, 2012

Magnitude of the dimmest star you could see with 60 in telescope?

Suppose you can just barely see a twelfth-magnitude star through an amateur's 6 in telescope. What is the magnitude of the dimmest star you could see though a 60 in telescope?Magnitude of the dimmest star you could see with 60 in telescope?First, calculate the aperture ratio between the two telescopes. Since the aperture area is proportional to the square of the diameter, and the second telescope is 10x larger than the first, the aperture is 10虏 or 100 times larger. So it should be able to detect objects 100 times dimmer.



By definition (look up the Pogson ratio), a 100:1 ratio represents a magnitude change of 5. Thus, the larger telescope should be able to detect stars down to about 17th magnitude.



Of course, this is oversimplified, since it doesn't take into account things like the sky-limiting magnitude due to atmospheric scattering of light.Magnitude of the dimmest star you could see with 60 in telescope?Aperture by itself isn't the only factor. Magnification, how dark the sky is, etc. I've linked to a calculator below that should help you out. Reasonable parameters appear to top out at about Mag 18.2Magnitude of the dimmest star you could see with 60 in telescope?relative aperture -%26gt; relative light gathering power



relative light gathering power -%26gt; magnitude difference



done

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