What is the lowest magnification I would need to clearly make out Saturn’s rings?
April 30, 2010 by
Filed under Zoom Binoculars
I’m about to treat myself to some binoculars. I’ve seen some decent looking zoom binoculars (I know zoom bins aren’t quite as good as fixed mag ones) varying from 10 to 100 times magnification and from 50 to 100mm aperature. Most of the time I’d probably use them on the lowest power for looking at star fields and galaxies etc etc, but I’d also like to shove them on a tripod and use them on Jupiter and Saturn from time to time.
Therefore, I’d like to know at what magnification would I be able to see the rings around saturn? I don’t need to be making out the divisions in the rings or anything like that. I’m sure I read somewhere a while back that you could at 40x? That sound a little low to me? I’m not sure!
Thanks in advance for your answers!
Not sure about saturn but if you bend over and look between your legs, you can see Uranus real clear…
The first link says 50X. The second link says 35X. The third link says a cheap telescope can see them. For astronomy, the main thing is to focus on the aperture.
I used to have a 60 mm refractor telescope with 2 lenses, one 12 mm and one 4.5 mm. The 4.5 gave me a power of 155x and the rings were visable but not clear. At the 12mm I could see the rings fine and I believe the power was 60x.