TELESCOPES

The key to purchasing a good telescope is understand what a telescope really does - not what it does not do. Telescopes do not use magnifying lenses to make distant stars and planets visible. Magnifying lenses do nothing to help you see the sky. A telescope does one thing only - it gathers light! The sun is so bright even distant planets get a good dose of light and they reflect it back. So much reflected light, it makes them appear as stars. The larger the opening of a telescope the more light it gathers and the better the image a person can see when the light is concentrated into one spot. A telescope concentrates this light in one of two ways. Light is gathered either through a lense in the front of it (Refractor type), or via a mirror in the end of it which is curved in such away it reflects it back onto a concentrated spot on a smaller second mirror which then sends it out through the eye piece (Reflector type).