The Problem
Many celestial objects of interest are too faint to be visible to the unaided eye. Telescopes or binoculars collect much more light, making faint object visible, but have a smaller field of view, thus complicating orientation on the sky.
The field of view of binoculars is rarely more than eight degrees, while that of typical amateur telescopes may be substantially less than one degree, depending on the magnification used. Many objects are best observed using higher magnifications, which inevitably go along with narrow fields of view.
Read more about this topic: Star Hopping
Famous quotes containing the word problem:
“The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)