The majesty of the universe has fascinated me since I was a teenager in the '50s. To me, "celestial", or heavenly, connotes wide angle star-field vistas.

Let's look at what low power means, its relationship to field of view, the meaning of "RFT", and what specific low power views (in my experience) are particularly exciting.

How large a field can you get with a telescope? The field of any telescope is determined by the eyepiece field stop and the focal length of the telescope. Divide 47 mm by the focal length, and you have the approximate "tangent" of the true field. Therefore, a 500 mm f.l. telescope could give you 5.4°.

A fast f/# telescope objective will produce the same brightness as a slow telescope with the same aperture and magnification. For visual observing, the fast f/# implies a short f.l., which does give the most field. Visually, therefore, we can say that a "faster" scope has more potential field, but no more image brightness than a slow scope of the same aperture!

If you increased the magnification, let's say by using a higher power wider field eyepiece, you would see more detail over a similarly sized field. The view will generally improve. Why? Because the sky background dims at the same rate while contrast is maintained between the background and subject. For best low-power viewing, use the highest power that properly frames the subject. You will see the most detail and best contrast with the least contribution of eye defects.

While the example for a refractor shows that there is no arbitrary limit to how low you can go, that is not true for reflectors or SCTs that have central obscurations. So ironically, a fast SCT is not ideal for low power wide angle viewing. An even better choice would be an f/4.5 Dobsonian or Newtonian with the secondary obscuration limited to about 20%. Remember though to consider a coma corrector such as the Paracorr.

To me, no view is spectacular if the stars look like blobs.