is there such a thing as too big

from a somewhat urban light poluted sky, is there a point where a scope it too big or is aperture always king. would i benefit from going from an 11" scope to say a 16".
forget about weight and portability.
some people are telling me 10-11" is best unless you are bringing the scope to dark skies.

victor truglio said:

from a somewhat urban light poluted sky, is there a point where a scope it too big or is aperture always king. would i benefit from going from an 11" scope to say a 16".
forget about weight and portability.
some people are telling me 10-11" is best unless you are bringing the scope to dark skies.

No. If you live in light polluted areas, larger aperture is ALWAYS better. Period. A 12 or 16 will wipe the floor with a 10 in heavy light pollution. Only drawback? You also have to MOVE a 12 or 16.

LOL.

victor truglio said:

from a somewhat urban light poluted sky, is there a point where a scope it too big or is aperture always king. would i benefit from going from an 11" scope to say a 16".
forget about weight and portability.
some people are telling me 10-11" is best unless you are bringing the scope to dark skies.

Victor:

I am going to jump on the Bandwagon with the rest of em... My collection includes a 10 inch F/5, a 12.5 inch F/4.06, a 12.5 inch F/6 and a 16 inch F/4.42.

Whether the weight and cost are worth it to you, there is no doubt that I see more detail and fainter details as the aperture increases. Larger scopes also increase the brightness of the sky so one needs to be prepared for more muddy gray at the large exit pupils one needs for the wide field but the views can be definitely stunning.

jon

What are your priorities? If brightness is king, bigger is better. If sharpness is king, I get the best performance around 6" of aperture on a night of average seeing. If using heavy light filtering, bigger is usually better.

From dark Montana skies, I see about anything I need to see with a 6" 1/8 wave high quality Russian scope. It's easy to transport and set up. It blows away bigger scopes on lunar viewing. For deep sky, bigger would be better, but my mags are generally limited by seeing at the 6" aperture size. Globular clusters are the exception. Big apertures bring them to life.