Where To Use A Reflector Telescope
Serious students of astronomy (or those who aspire to be) generally recognize that the best type of telescope for their needs is a reflecting scope, one that gathers and focuses light with two or more mirrors. Because its primary mirror is greater in dimension than the glass lenses of refractor scopes, the reflector telescope can usually shed more light on the objective image than can possibly be gathered using glass lenses of much smaller diameter.
As with almost all products, reflector scopes come in a variety of sizes and (more significantly) qualities, so you must shop carefully to get the very best buy for your money.
One of the primary advantages of reflectors vs. refractors is the virtual absence of chromatic aberration (or the distortion of colours) that is generally experienced with refractors but is eliminated in the reflector because the latter's parabolic mirrors focus each ray of light received from the original parallel beam at a single point. While the mirrors of a reflecting telescope in no way alter the wavelengths of light, the same cannot be said of refractive lenses, which by definition alter the way that the original wavelengths of light are eventually perceived.
Most users of reflecting telescopes feel they are getting more bang for their buck in that the use of mirrors offers significantly more magnification power than a refractor scope of comparable price. Because only the reflective side of the mirror interacts with the light, the optical surfaces in a reflector can be produced more inexpensively than the glass lenses of a refractor, the surfaces of which must be perfectly polished on both sides to allow light to pass from one side of the lens to the other without any intervening distortion.
Although most astronomers, both of the professional and armchair variety, prefer reflecting telescopes. Both types of scope have some drawbacks of which users should be aware. In the case of reflectors, users must take care to maintain their scopes on a regular basis to ensure that the mirrors are in proper alignment and kept scrupulously clean. Failure to do so almost guarantees that the images captured by the scope will deteriorate in quality over time.
Another problem shared by both reflector and refractor scopes is the fact that both deliver an inverted image. This problem can be easily enough addressed by introducing a relay or prism into the light path so that the final image perceived at the eyepiece is converted back into its original position.
£59.99
