PIXEL SCALE CALCULATOR

How to Use: make your selections in 1-5, press the "Calculate" button.
PARAMETERS
1. Aperture inches => mm
2. Focal Ratio
3. CCD Camera
4. Binning
5. Seeing arcsec

TELESCOPE
Focal Length inches => mm
Resolution (Dawes Limit) arcsec

CCD
Pixel Array (h,v) # pixels
Raw Pixel Size microns
Pixel Array After Binning microns
Pixel Scale arcsecs/pixel
Field of View arcmins
Stellar FWHM pixels

IMAGING
Deep Sky Planetary
Optimum* Pixel Scale 2 arcsec/pixel ½ arcsec/pixel
Optimum Focal Length mm
Optimum Focal Ratio

*NOTES ON PIXEL SCALE

The rule of thumb for pixel scale is to aim for around 2 arcsec/pixel for deep sky imaging and around ½ arcsec/pixel for planetary imaging.

Ideally, your pixel scale will be half of the value of seeing for your site (e.g. if your site tends to have seeing around 3 arcsecs, then you want a pixel scale of 1.5 arcsec per pixel).

Oversampling slightly is preferable to undersampling, since undersampling gives you "blocky" looking stars (e.g. in previous example 1 arcsec/pixel would be better than 2 arcsec/pixel)!

Also, oversampling can be of benefit if you are running Maximum Entropy Deconvolution on your images.

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