Celestia Forums

Besides Titan, wich moons can be seen with a 3" reflector telescope?

ElPelado wrote:Besides Titan, wich moons can be seen with a 3" reflector telescope?

Since I never had a telecope below 4 inch (except my first single 2" lens refractor at the age of 12;-)), I do not really know for sure.

My guess is, however: Just Titan...

Bye Fridger

and with a 4" one? you can?

Hi ElPelado,

According to the "limit magnitude" formula (Ml = 7.1 + 5 x log10 D) the limit magnitude for a 3" telescope is 11.5. And here's a little table with the magnitudes of some of the Saturn moons as they are now:



Note: There are some factors that can reduce your limit magnitude dramatically (light pollution, sky pollution, etc..)

i think that yesterday i saw maybe an other moon yesterday. i saw titan and some stars in that region, and maybe some other moon/s. but i am not sure.
i am waiting to see jupiter...

Talking about telescopes... do you know a site showing how to build a good one?

I've searched the net for tutorials but most of them are very dificult to understand since there are few images showing how to do..

thanks

Anonymous Guest,

You need to buy some books. Not everything is on the Web. For example, Sky and Telescope publishes several books describing how to do it.

The best are the ones titled Amateur Telescope Making. One is a recent single volume of 263 pages edited by Tonkin. The other is an older, three volume set totalling about 1500 pages edited by Ingalls. They describe several types of telescopes and the procedures necessary to grind, polish and test the optics and to construct their mounts.