What is the largest image scale that a tiny telescope can achieve on a massive planet like Jupiter? Let's experiment and find out.
For this special project, the iPhone astro app NightCap was used to acquire the image of Jupiter and enlarge it with maximum zoom. Such massive image scale is often called "empty magnification" because it exceeds the power limitations of the aperture and likely is without fine detail. Nevertheless, the FirstScope has achieved a truly massive image scale showing the planet jupiter on the night of Saturday, August 29, 2020. At left is a photo of the FirstScope taken in total darkness using NightCap. The telescope uses an arsenal of almost weightless aspheric lens eyepieces and eyepiece projection by holding the phone above the ocular, therefore there is no weight imbalance and no counterweights are needed. This experiment also used a 6mm Celestron orthoscopic eyepiece (heavier but not too heavy) for a much higher EFL. The final image was image processed, enlarged, rotated, scaled, reduced in noise, and adjusted. A grid scale was added to determine the overall image magnification of 400mm * 100x * 2mm = 80,000 power. This is truly a remarkable feat of Jupiter image scale and color for such a small and meager telescope.
Celestron FirstScope - Index
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2020/08/celestron-firstscope-index.html
