Starship Asterisk*

After posting the initial message, I wondered if Hubble had an image to compare. They do: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1995/35/image/c/ The detail in the Hubble image is nearly equivalent to the APOD image. Given Hubble is 10 times the diameter of the telescope in question and i...

It is a common technique to freeze out the blurring and distortion due to Earth's atmosphere by taking many very short exposures and adding them together. However, I have a hard time believing that such a small telescope can capture such detail. The theoretical limit of a telescope's angular detail ...

The bluish features in both images are internal reflections in the telescope. When there is a very bright object in the field of view, the light can reflect around inside the telescope and camera before being recorded. The artifact is blue because both examples are from blue stars. There is probably...