telescopes?

Question

wat is the difference between a reflecting, and a refracting telescope?

thanks!!!!

Answer 1

Simply:

A reflector telescope uses a mirror to collect light.

A Refractor telescop uses an objective lens to collect light.

More Technically:

There are 3 basic types of telescopes:

1. Refractors are long, thin telescopes that collect light through multi-element lenses. Known for sharp, detailed, contrasty images, they are best for viewing the moon and planets.

2. Reflectors (Newtonian) collect light with a curved, concave mirror. Their large apertures allow them to serve up fine, highly-resolved images of planets and deep-sky objects alike. These scopes are unsuitable for terrestrial (earthly) viewing as they produce an upside-down image and are designed exclusively for astronomy.

3. Catadioptrics or compound telescopes (Schmidt-Cassegrain or Maksutov-Cassegrain) use both mirrors and lenses to collect and focus the incoming light. They sport very compact tubes, and give you great all-around performance.

There is no "best" telescope for everyone. The one that’s right for you will depend on your lifestyle and your astronomy goals. The best telescope is the one you’ll use most often. And that will depend on your comfort zone in terms of size, price and ease of use.

The Pros and Cons:

Refractors

For observing the Moon and major planets and separating out binary stars—a small, quality achromatic refractor of 60mm to 80mm aperture will make a fine starter scope. They are portable, maintenance free, and inexpensive ($100 - $400). Moving up to a 90mm or 100mm aperture will snare more objects and provide better performance, for a higher price. Renowned for their crisp, sharp, contrasty images—refractors are the priciest per inch of aperture of all the scopes. Their cost and bulk factors limit the practical useful maximum size to smaller apertures. A refractor is the scope of choice if you will be doing most of your observing from the city or suburbs, where the night skies are moderately light-polluted. Here, more aperture doesn’t gain you much, since viewing is restricted to the Moon and planets. A big scope would only amplify the skyglow, yielding poor washed out images.

Reflectors

Newtonian reflectors are great all-around scopes, offering generous apertures at affordable prices. They work for both planetary and deep-sky viewing. These scopes are more fragile and require more maintenance than the others. An open optical tube design allows image-degrading air currents and air contaminants, which over time will degrade the mirror coatings and decrease performance. The optical components can go out of alignment, requiring collimating. Of course, the larger the aperture, the more you’ll see. Smaller 3" and 4.5" equatorially mounted Newtonians will provide a nice survey of celestial luminaries, and they are easily portable. 6" and 8" Newts have enough aperture to deliver captivating images of fainter fare—clusters, galaxies and nebulas, especially in a reasonably dark sky. The trade off is their bulk and weight—something you should definitely take into consideration. But a 6" Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount is easily manageable by one person and makes a great starter scope. Dobsonian-mounted reflectors are lower in price than their equatorial counterparts and start around $350.

Catadioptrics

These scopes are the most versatile telescopes and have the best all around, all purpose design. The Schmidt-Cassegrain or Maksutov-Cassegrain scopes are very portable. They utilize a large aperture in a very compact tube. Away from urban sprawl, with reasonably dark skies, an 8" SC provides excellent views of the Moon, planets, and faint deep-sky objects (clusters, galaxies, nebulas, comets etc.) and is well suited for astrophotography. You will pay over $1000 for the most basic models (and hundreds more to outfit it for astrophotography) with an equatorial mount. With a hefty tripod and mount, the larger models (10" & 12") can be a bit cumbersome for one person. There are more accessories available for these scopes than the other two. These telescopes are gaining popularity and can be completely computer-controlled, giving it what‘s called "GO TO" capability to any object in the sky, if you want to pay the price. They start at $1700.

Cheers :-)

Answer 2

Two basic types of telescopes exist, the Refractor, and the
Reflector.

The Refractor type telescope uses an objective lens similar
to the lens in your eye to gather light and focus it into an
eyepiece which you can look into and see the target objects.
In this type of telescope, the objective lens becomes very hard to manufacture somewhere around six to eight inches in diameter and larger.

Reflector telescopes bypass this problem by using a curved mirror to collect the light and focus it onto an eyepiece which you can look through to see the target objects. It is much easier to grind a curved dish into glass and add a mirror finish to it (Reflector Scopes), than to locate an optically
perfect chunk of glass and machine curves onto both sides of it, then coat it with all of the high tech coatings that modern glass requires for precision viewing.

As telescopes become larger and larger to capture more light and see farther with better detail, the focal length of the optical tube becomes very cumbersome (awkward). So
developments have been made to fold this light path back onto itself thus cutting the length of the optical tube by 1 / 2
or more. There are various names for those designs. One popular design is the Schmidt Cassegrain which is currently available with mirror sizes from about 3 Inches up to near 20 Inches. Of course, the larger the mirror, the larger and more expensive all of the accessories and mounting hardware become. So really large telescopes become expensive quite fast.

If a telescope has an objective lense at the end pointing toward the target object, it is a refractor.

If the telescope has a mirror at the bottom of the optical tube, and the open end points toward the target object, it is a reflector telescope.

Answer 3

seem, human beings assist you to comprehend that it particularly is a toddler's toy, and in assessment to telescopes some human beings have used or equipped, it particularly is. even though it particularly is plenty greater valuable than the bare eye. i might say while you're thinking some telescope that length, you will possibly evaluate a pair of binoculars. i don't comprehend what funds you're speaking approximately, yet you will possibly desire to be waiting to locate some respectable 2d-hand ones with a minimum of 50 mm lenses for a similar value. verify it out on e-bay it sluggish. I even have considered greater than a number of them there.

Answer 4

A reflecting telescope focuses light using a curved mirror. Refractors use lenses.