February 8, 2009
Reflecting Refracting Telescopes : Selecting The Best Reflecting Telescopes
Getting to Know Reflecting and Refracting Telescopes
Telescopes are outstanding instruments for exploring objects in the night sky and the principal part of any telescope is the objective. The objective lens is what gives access to the light into the telescope enabling you to visualize the images from the sky. Telescopes with bigger objective lenses permit more light in and that means a sharper image for the spectator.
The 2 primary types of telescopes are reflecting telescopes and refracting telescopes. These two types are similar in overall design apart from for the manner in which they collect light.
The Key Differences in Refracting and Reflecting Telescopes
The objective lens in refracting telescopes is a glass lens that is placed close to the front end of the telescope. The objective takes the light that it collects and refracts, or deflects, it to send it to the eyepiece, which then magnifies the image. Refracting telescope engineering is also an important elementin other precision equipment like binoculars, rifle scopes and spyglasses.
On the other hand, reflecting telescopes are different because the objective lens is a reflective mirror at the bottom end of the telescope rather than a glass lens at the front end. The mirror in a reflecting telescope has a dished shape, or a bowl like shape, which permits it to capture the light in the central of the mirror and direct it as one stream of light towards the eyepiece so the image can be viewed.
Reasons to use a Reflecting Telescope
Reflecting telescopes are desired by many astronomers for various reasons. A key reason is less distortion with a reflecting telescope than with a refracting telescope since the mirror is able to gather and reflect all wavelengths of color consistently. The utilising of the mirrors instead of glass lenses reflecting telescopes less expensive than refracting telescopes.
When mirrors are utilized rather than glass lenses, the telescope can be designed much larger to allow for the supports for the mirror to be located on the posterior of the telescope. The larger the mirror that is used, the more light that is reflected and the better and clearer the image will be.
Disadvantages of the Reflecting Telescope
Reflecting telescopes can have their own issues and problems as well. One problem can be the size of reflecting telescopes. As larger and larger mirrors are used, the telescopes have to grow in size to fit the mirrors inside. While the images are better with the larger reflecting telescopes, they are not very portable and it can be problematic finding a a convenient place to keep them when you are not using them.
Another problem is that reflecting telescopes may require to have the mirrors alignment corrected from time to time to keep them working perfectly and to maximize the light that is captured.
Many of the most popular telescope brands provide both refracting and reflecting style telescopes for the unprofessional stargazer.
Virtually all of the better telescopes used in research are reflectors. Reflecting telescopes come in many design variations and may utilize complementary optic elements to improve the image quality or position the image in a mechanically advantageous position. As reflecting telescopes utilize mirrors, the design is often referred to as a catatropic telescope.
Filed under Telescopes by astronomy_fan