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Mankind has been peering through the eyepieces of telescopes to see celestial objects since the first telescope was introduced over 400 years ago. In that time, telescopes have come a long way in technology. Today, we have computerized telescopes, equatorial mounts, high-quality images, greater magnification, smartphone adapters for astrophotographers, and even WiFi-capable devices that automatically sight in celestial bodies and connect to your computer.
Amateur astronomers will often start out curious about the night sky and soon find themselves with a passion for exploring scientific principles. Gazing into the deep sky and beyond our solar system can truly be addictive, and we have some of the best telescopes for beginners and expert astronomers alike. From Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes to refracting telescopes, we have several telescope designs to help you spot star clusters and deep sky objects.
What do telescopes do?
Simply put, telescopes allow us to see distant objects. They gather as much light as possible to keep us stargazing for hours. They use lenses starting at the eyepieces and going all the way to the objective lens, with curved mirrors within the tubes to gather and focus light, and therefore images, amplifying and magnifying the light so that we can see it easily.
Many factors affect the quality and performance of telescopes. Beginners will usually have a simple Alt-Azimuth mount because they're easy to operate. The focal length determines the magnification power. A starter model is usually a smaller, more portable telescope, too.
What are the 4 main types of telescopes?
The 4 basic types of telescopes are:
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Refractor Telescopes: The earliest type of telescope, and still one of the most popular. This type uses a biconvex lens and biconvex eyepiece. The lens brings the light to a central focal point to magnify the image. The main drawback to this option is that it doesn’t collect all wavelengths of light.
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Reflector Telescopes: Known as one of the most powerful types of telescopes for the best budget, a reflector telescope uses curved mirrors to amplify and focus light rather than filter the light through lenses.
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Dobsonian Telescopes: Based on the original Newtonian reflector telescope, Dobsonian telescopes were invented in 1965 by John Dobson. This scope uses an alt-azimuth mount and is much larger than other commercial telescopes. Also, this was one of the first models that started popularizing large, powerful telescopes among the public.
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Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescopes: This type is a catadioptric telescope and uses a spherical mirror. With its use of spherical symmetry, the goal was to solve common problems that exist in other types of telescopes, namely off-axis aberrations and chromatic aberrations.
What are the top 5 telescopes?
These are the Top 5 most popular brands of telescopes in our lineup are:
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Shop online at OpticsPlanet.com for great deals on telescopes and telescope accessories that provide a wide field of view and feature advanced optical systems to help you view nebulas, Orion, or planets like Jupiter and Saturn. Learn more about telescopes, astronomy, and astrophotography in our How-To Guides and Articles for Telescopes. Of course, when you order from us, most orders over $49.00 get FREE SHIPPING!
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