What kind of midroscope do you buy to see planets? know lense have to be big numbers to see good right?

Answer 1

What you want is called a telescope. Try this link for some basic information:
http://www.telescope.com/content/learningcenter/content2main.jsp?iCategoryID=23&iContentID=619&CCNavIDs=19,20,23

Answer 2

Beware of department store scopes boasting big magnification numbers. What you are looking for is a big front aperture, say 3 inches or more. In addition, the lenses should be multi-coated. This will help the light to properly pass though the lenses. A significant amount of light can be lost when passing through uncoated lenses. So capturing the light and getting it to your eye is the idea. Magnifying the image is all done with the eye pieces. You can buy a variety of these depending on what you want to do.

There are different types of scopes to buy.

1) Refraction type - good for daylight landscape viewing and planets. Front apertures tend to stay around the 3 inch size or so because a large aperture version is expensive. Hence not so good for faint deep space objects.

2) Newtonian - Good all round scope and better for deep space, galaxies and such. Not so good for daylight viewing. Less expensive but not as rugged.

3) Schmidt Cassegrian - Best all round instrument and a backyard favorite too but probably the most costly.

My best advice is to get a copy of the book "Night Watch" by Terence Dickinson. In it he does a great comparison of these and other scopes. He'll show what to consider for such a purchase. Bare in mind, you might find you may not want a telescope at all at first, some experts recommend 10x50 binoculars for star gazing. Good luck.

Answer 3

You use a telescope (tele = far) for observing planets, not a microscope (micro = small). Any spotting telescope (2" or larger) should be sufficient for seeing Jupiter's larger moons, Saturn's rings, or some other interesting astronomical phenomena. Good astronomical instruments with lenses or mirrors 4 to 6 inches in diameter are better; some of these have built-in computers and clock drives so that a particular object can be easily found and tracked, notwithstanding the earth's rotation.

Answer 4

The sad fact is, you don't know enough about the subject to understand any answer anybody could give you. Go get a book on telescopes or search the web. But be warned, there is a wee bit of math involved ☺


Doug

Answer 5

Usally if you go to a wal-mart they will have some telescopes that will have the info on the zoom.

Answer 6

here's a link on ebay where you can read reviews of them by ebay members.