What can you see in a 5" mak cass?

considering a 5" mak cass, but was wondering if that was a pointless aperture. i already have an 8" dob, but want sometimes to have goto and tracking maybe for experimenting with photography, and perhaps for planets and some brighter dsos.

about once a year i go to a really dark sky sight, and it would certainly be more portable than my 8" dob, but what could i nab with a 5" MC at a dark sky sight? with my dob one year, i was seeing galaxies everywhere, structure in m51 and all that. i know ap. wins, but is 5" pointless or could it still go deep or do galaxies only show up on an attached camera if you know what I mean?

Thanks.

As a point of reference, a 5" Mak will not perform quite as well as a good 4" refractor. On the plus side, 5" Maks will show no false color, are (usually) relatively small and light, and are (usually) relatively inexpensive, as compared to a 100mm APO. Things to consider would be the mechanical quality and general fit and finish of the Mak you intend to buy, as well as its optical quality. All things considered, its hard to go wrong with many of these small aperture Maks. Have fun!

Walter

5" is not pointless at all! I use an 11" SCT and a 5" newt. The 11" shows more detail in all objects but there's a lot of objects that subjectively look better in the 5".

You can see countless galaxies in a 5". ("Countless" means a few hundred in this case). M81/M82 look fantastic as a pair. Open clusters like M35, M37 (my favourite) and the double cluster look fantastic. M31 looks great. M65/M66 looks great.

M51 looks good. No actual spiral arms, but the dim haze surrounding the core is the about the same size as the spiral arms i know from photos.

M13 will certainly look better in an 8", but it can be resolved to the core in a 5" when the sky is dark and clear.

You will need a low power eyepiece for some deep sky objects. Many objects arguably look best at 40x (my favourite 5" faint-fuzzy-magnification!).

Conclusion: You must buy a 5" or smaller. Now!

regards, Erlend