Swapped my old 8-inch Dob for a 6-inch refractor last month and wow what a difference in my moon shots

2 comments

2 Comments

I read that refractors just naturally give you more contrast on bright targets like the moon because there's no central obstruction stealing light. One guy on a forum I lurk on said his 6-inch refractor showed him details in the lunar craters he'd never seen through his old Dob, even though the Dob had a bigger mirror (which surprised me). That whole thing about aperture not always being king really clicked for me when I saw your post. Plus the moon is so bright anyway that you don't need to gather tons of light, you need sharpness and good contrast (which a good refractor has in spades).

dakota_rivera18d ago

Wait have you ever seen a really good refractor next to a Dob of similar price? My buddy Marcus had an 8-inch Dob for like three years and he was always complaining about how his lunar shots came out kinda soft no matter what eyepiece he used. He finally saved up and bought a used 4-inch refractor from some old guy at a star party and the first time he aimed it at the moon he called me at like two in the morning just to talk about how he could see these tiny little rims around craters he never noticed before. He kept saying the Dob just made everything look like a bright blob compared to that little refractor and he could actually pick out different shades of gray in the mare instead of just a solid white mass. It really is wild how much the central obstruction messes things up for bright targets even if the big mirror collects more total light. Now he jokes that his Dob is just a fancy paperweight unless he wants to look at faint galaxies or something.