What detrimental effect occurs if an observer uses an eyepiece that provides 300x magnification on a small telescope when viewing a faint nebula?

Answer

The image is dimmed so severely due to magnification that the already faint nebula will disappear entirely.

Eyepieces control magnification, which determines how large the image appears, but they do not increase the total number of photons collected by the telescope's aperture. Increasing magnification beyond a certain point spreads the limited available light over an even larger retinal area, effectively decreasing the intensity or surface brightness of the image presented to the eye. For an object that is already near the visual threshold, like a faint nebula, excessive magnification—such as 300x on a small scope—will dim the image so profoundly that the object's subtle light falls completely below the eye's ability to register it, causing the target to vanish from view despite appearing sharper in terms of field definition.

What detrimental effect occurs if an observer uses an eyepiece that provides 300x magnification on a small telescope when viewing a faint nebula?

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