Telescope magnification

A friend recently asked me about telescopes, and it made me think about the pictures that I took with my telescope which I haven't looked at in years. This series of photos was a test of the range of magnifications possible with a couple camera lenses and the telescope.

These photos were shot with a Nikon FE2, with some run-of-the-mill 400ASA color film. The photos were developed and printed 4x6 at a 1-hour photo place. I scanned the photos with a flatbed scanner.

50mm Nikon lens. This is essentially the field of view that normal human vision has.

135mm Vivitar lens.

2032mm Celestron Nextar 8" SCT telescope. Prime focus. The ceramic insulator is just visible in the lower right corner.

The same telescope using eyepiece projection -- I forget the focal length of the eyepiece. The white halo in the center of the image is an artifact of my shoddily-mounted eyepiece setup.

A shorter focal length eyepiece increases the magnification even more. This is probably a 6mm eyepiece, giving 2032/6 = 338x magnification. The photo is blurry, but this is mainly due to tiny vibrations in the 'scope and camera. When viewing this directly through the eyepiece, the image is pretty sharp since human eyes and brains have better image processing than cameras.