Just how much magnification is equal to 1X?

When I was a kid, I liked to play with numbers. I knew Jupiter could sometimes be larger than 45”, so I was thinking, if someday I have a 100X telescope, Jupiter would look like 45”x100=75’. Holy Cow, that’s two and half times the diameter of the moon, and 6.25 times the area! That must be huge with lots of details. But I was disappointed, when I finally had a scope; the Jupiter looks like a pea, a small pea.

This happened to several of my (non-astro) friends as well. When I showed them the moon at 30X, they didn’t believe the moon was magnified. They thought it’s just clearer in the telescope, but not larger.

So, anybody had similar experience?

Clear Skies,
Gu 8)

There is no clear definition of what 1 power means. And it is even more confusing when applied to astroimaging.

I think the clearest definition, although it has its own problems, is that one power means it takes up the same actual field of view as it does with the unaided eye. To express this another way, if the moon looks like it is half a degree across in the sky, any device which makes it appear to take up half a degree in the eye would be ONE power. Examples of these are Tel-Rads, red-dot finders, and welding glass to observe the sun.

When you start to apply these things to astro images, you have to factor in how the images are going to be viewed. This includes projected, printed, or displayed size versus distance from the screen to the viewer.

Alex