Astronomical Seeing

To follow on from my previous thread on Optical Quality and Effects of Secondary
here's a thread on Astronomical Seeing.

Couple of interesting pieces of info in Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seein...ription_of_r0_and_t0
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_parameter

To summarise the second link as I understand it.:
If you are using a small telescope where the scope is not pushing the limitations of the atmosphere, the optical quality of the mirrors/lenses will be the limiting factor.
If you are using a large aperture scope, the atmospheric turbulence will be the limiting factor.
To exceed the atmospheric limit, adaptive optics are required.

Michael.

Yea, I completely agree from what I see at the scope. The BIG factor in the big dob is the atmospherics caused by heat on the primary, I have only on a rare number of times got to the point where I've been limited by the optics, nothing you can do about bad seeing caused by the jetstream...

to put it in an equation,
Mirror heat + tube currents = image death + swearing +

Also worth reading Page 30 of "Advanced Optics for Astronomical Telescopes"
books.google.ie/books?id=-0aAWyckS_8C&pg...cal%20seeing&f=false