[Prodigal Son]

I don't want to sound too ignorant about astronomy- but what exactly can you see with a good 10 inch? Are we talking galaxies? Rings of Saturn? Jupiter's red spot? Be specific if you don't mind- I'm really interested. What would be the range of what you could see?

[Dan(9698)]

>>...what exactly can you see with a good 10 inch?

Ten inch and smaller objects? :)

[longshadow]

but what exactly can you see with a good 10 inch? Are we talking galaxies? Rings of Saturn? Jupiter's red spot?

All of the above. And nebulae, globular and open star clusters, binary stars, and much more. Easily. Even a smaller scope will allow you to see anything on your list.

The larger the (conventional) telescope, the fainter the object you can see, as well as finer detail.

[longshadow]

What would be the range of what you could see?

There is no "range" limit, per se.

The limiting factor is how faint the object is. Light gathering ability of a conventional telescope is determined by the area of the primary lens or mirror. The light collecting area is a function of the square of the diameter of the lens or mirror, so a an 8" scope will collect 4 times as much light as a 4" scope, and so on.

Planets are so bright that a very modest telescope is adequate to see them. 2" - 3" refractors will do the job, though they won't show a great deal of detail. The ubiquitous 8" catadioptric scopes (Meade, Celestron) will show much more detail on planets, plus have the light gathering ability needed to see faint, diffuse objects like nebulae and galaxies.

Trivia question: name four galaxies visible from Earth with the naked eye ....