Floaters

Not really an equipment post, but here goes.I have an 8" f/6 Discovery dob. Using my highest power on Mars at 271x (9mm ortho and TV 2x) I notice some floaters. They are not too bad, but I hardly notice them at 222x and never at 163x. While at 271x I pulled the ep further out from the barlow for a higher mag I saw the inside of my eye. The "canals" on Mars were everywhere. So my question is, is this a trait from the ep, the mag, or the exit pupil? Also why does this happen? I am happy with the view at 271x, but would like to go higher if conditions permit. Would a longer focal ratio scope minimize this?
Thanks,
Jason

No -- I have fairly intrusive floaters myself, considerably more at 35 than I did at 25. The eye doctor says nothing really wrong, learn to live with it. Okay. They're really only a problem with planetary viewing, not with daily life.

The intrusion of the floaters into your planetary views rises seemingly exponentially as you increase power. This has been my observation too. I believe it's because the size of the 'floaters' in your eyeball are rising rapidly in proportion to the exit pupil of light getting into your eye -- in effect creating a 'secondary obstruction' right inside your eyeball. It's like having larger and larger tree branches in front of your scope as the magnification increases.

Turn your face down and shake your head a bit, this *can* reposition the floaters into less intrusive parts of your eyeball. They may still be too much though depending on how bad yours are. The only really decisive way to beat the floaters is to keep the exit pupil much bigger than the floaters -- this means either using lower power :-( or using same power with larger aperture :-)

Going from 4" to 10" I noticed a drastic decrease in 'floater' obstruction.

Jason,
I too have floaters rather badly in my right eye, but my left is mostly floater free so I use that eye when viewing Luna and planets at higher powers in my 8" Dob. Interesting comment by Paul concerning binoviewers. Just one more rational for buying one.

Warren Boyles