NAKED EYE vs ELECTRONIC SENSOR

The human eye has evolved to see during the day and for moving images, at night it is necessary to adapt to the dark, which lasts between 10 and 20 minutes and allows the pupil to fully dilate and collect as much light as possible; however, even in these conditions the retina is unable to hold the light that hits it for more than 0.1 seconds and a “new” image is again and continuously sent to the brain.

On the contrary, a camera is able to keep the “shutter” open even for several hours by “accumulating” in a single image all the light that can reach the sensor, so to make a comparison an image of a camera also of just 10 seconds will collect 100 times the amount of light that the human eye can collect; that’s why the photographs are so extremely detailed and colorful.

However, photography is always an artifice, it does not give the same feeling of “living” in the moment … a bit like seeing the Grand Canyon in photos and taking a trip to Arizona and seeing it in person, there is a big difference! This is why even if only very faint images can be seen at the telescope and with few details the emotion of seeing them live is always very strong.

The diameter of the telescope is also important, our 40 cm diameter Dobsonian will allow you to “focus” on the eye an amount of light 4000 times higher than the naked eye and considerably enlarged image.