Jupiter and Resolving Power

SEP 19, 2010

On August 31st, I took a new picture of Jupiter---best one so far with my little 3.5" reflector. On the linked page, I show both the raw unsharpened image, which is roughly how Jupiter looks visually through an eyepiece, and the same image after applying a "wavelet sharpening" technique. The result is an amazing improvement. Traditional definitions of resolution don't take into account "digital enhancement". Using the traditional definition, my image's resolution should be 1.5 arcseconds. With enhancement, the resolution improves to almost 0.5 arcseconds. (For reference, the Moon is 1800 arcseconds across.)

  --Bob