On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 22:39:48 GMT, "Lurking Luser"
wrote:

Hmm, I have been using a 80mm f/5 scope which gathers a fair amount of
light, but of course has a short focal lemgth of 400mm. Do you think a
barllow would help extend the focal length?

For planetary imaging, you aren't even in the ballpark. Figuring that these
small sensors typically have pixel sizes around 5-9u, you are operating at a
pixel scale of 2.5-4.5"! That is at least 10 times too big for imaging planets,
where short exposure times can beat atmospheric seeing.

Put another way, you are getting only about 5 pixels across Mars, where you
should be getting 50 or more. With such a short scope, it is going to take more
than a barlow to improve things much. If you don't have a longer focal length
scope available, you should be looking at eyepiece projection. Otherwise
switching to another camera will give no improvement at all, and if the pixels
are larger (as they probably will be) you will lose even more of the scarce
detail you already have.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com