Refracting Telescopes



Should you choose reflecting or refracting telescopes?

When deciding on which type of telescopes is best for your specific requirements, you will want to take into account target objects you intend to explore and your level of expertise.

The refractor is an optical system that makes use of a series of glass lenses, to refract or bend the light from a distant object, so that it can be focused to a point and then magnified by an eyepiece,it is often referred to as a Galilean refractor

This is the kind of instrument that the lay person normally thinks of when conjuring up a mental picture of a telescope.

At the end of the tube farthest away from the observer there is an objective lens that collects light from the object under obsevravtion to form an image at the other end which is viewed by means of an eyepiece.

The objective lens cannot be made of a single piece of glass since such anaelelement is not capable of brining light of differing wavelenghts to a common focus, introducing a prismatic effect that causes bright objects to be surrounded by false rainbow colors.

For observing the majority of night sky objects, you will want a telescope with as much aperture as is practical.

Keep in mind that as the size of the objective lens or mirror gets larger, so does the size of the telescope.

So make sure you pick a telescope that's not too heavy to handle or too complex for you to setup, particularly if portability is a necessity.

Refractors are not affected so greatly by atmospheric instabilities, which makes them ideally suited for observing the moon and planets.

Refracting telescopes are ideal for first-time and novice astronomers, small refractors are lightweight, portable and need almost no maintenance.

Still not sure if a refractor is the right choice?

Read more about reflector telescopes here....




Meade Refractor Telescope
For crisp wide field observing and imaging, nothing can beat a true triple-element apochromatic refractor

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