Dawes limit

An empirical formula derived by the English amateur astronomer William Dawes (1799–1868) that gives the smallest angular separation of two stars in which each is still observable with a telescope of given aperture. The Dawes limit in arcseconds is 11.6/D, where D is the aperture of the telescope in centimeters.

Related entries

• Rayleigh criterion
• resolution

Related category

• OPTICS AND OPTICAL PHENOMENA

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