In article ,
Peter Webb wrote:
I know this question is almost meaningless ... but perhaps not completely.

When it comes to "seeing" detail, what improvement can you get by
photography over the human eye? The human eye is presumably better at
optical separation, but CCDs for minimum magnitude.

The major advantage with photography is reproducibility. In a few
seconds (or a few hours, depending on what exposure time you use)
you get an image which later can be closely examined any number of
times by anyone. Visual observations o.t.o.h. can only be performed
"here-and-now" by the observer himself, one cannot later re-create the
same visual observation. True, you can draw, or describe, what you
see - but that's always a matter of interpretation which never can be
repeated later by someone else on the same visual observation.
Perhaps the best way to describe it is that visual observations are
"volatile".

The major advantage of visual observations is pleasu it's always
more pleasant to see something live than to see a photograph or video
of it.

And that's why visual observations are so popular among amateur astronomers
(who observe for the joy of it) while at the same time it's virtually
never used by professionals (who are demanded to produce reproducible
scientific results).


For example, I have heard that you can start seeing the spiral structure of
galaxies at about a 8 - 10" telescope aperture; if you are doing
astrophotography can this be seen with a lower aperture scope?




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