LEARNED IT · 08/26
2.8 km is the floor, and no amount of processing gets under it
Dawes limit at 76 mm is 1.53\", which is 2.8 km on the Moon. Focus, stacking and deconvolution all work below that ceiling, never through it.
Aperture sets the hard limit. 76 mm gives a Dawes limit of 1.53", which at the Moon's distance is a smallest resolvable feature of about 2.8 km. Stacking improves signal to noise. Deconvolution recovers contrast the optics passed but blurred. Neither invents detail the aperture never collected.
The useful consequence for this rig:
- Measured image scale is 0.853"/px, so 1.53" spans only 1.8 px. That's slightly under-sampled — a 2x Barlow would sample the diffraction limit properly, which is the single highest-value thing I could add.
- Drift (~17 px/s) is not a quality problem. It doesn't degrade a stack; it only caps run length. Park at the leading edge, hands off, and let the Moon drift through.
So the priority order is: sample the limit properly first, then chase seeing and focus. Chasing focus while under-sampled is optimising the wrong term.