$reflector vs refractor telescope$

REFLECTOR VS REFRACTOR TELESCOPE TV

Requires occasional maintenance/collimation for ideal viewing.

More expensive than reflectors at mid and large sizes.

“Chromatic Abberation” – where the lens breaks up the light like a prism.

Let’s look at the other side of the coin: Many astronomers, not wanting to haul around heavy reflectors, may opt for these advanced refractors. easy to transport) the refractors can easily win out with image quality. These can get very expensive, but at small sizes (i.e. The other advantage, the sharper images, tends to only come with higher-quality refractors or even what are known as apochromatic (3 or more lenses, or two very well designed ones) objective lenses. A small refractor will cost about as much as a small reflector and will give a beginning astronomer fewer things to worry about. The major selling point of refractors at small sizes is their traditional designs & lack of need for collimation. That’s four lens sides, each one with a different curve.

$reflector vs refractor telescope$

With a reflector, you need to polish both sides at least two lenses (most refracting telescopes use air-spaced achromats (multiple lenses) and will probably need coat them with an anti-reflection coating as well. With a mirror, you need to polish only one side and coat it. It is simply much easier to make a larger mirror than a large lens for a telescope. You see that first advantage of reflectors is a killer. Seems like Refractors are the winner, yes? No, not really. Are less expensive to build at larger sizes.Do not require much maintenance or collimation.The fact is: There is no simple answer for this. So now that you know how each is different, the question becomes: In a way this is like having a magnifying glass focus on a magnified image – sort of.

$reflector vs refractor telescope$

This bent light is designed to come to form an image very close to where the eyepiece is located (you can get an idea of how this works by making an image of an object on a wall with a magnifying lens – just remember the telescope is designed to have the image form much further away!). Well, what is going on is that while the result is the same (light gathering and magnification), and some of the fundamental optics are doing the same thing, the fact is they are both doing it very differently.įirst up the refractor employs a large lens, located at the front of the tube, to refract (hence the name) or bend the light. The eyepiece just kind of sticks out of the side, and the finderscope (a little telescope used to help find things in the night sky) isn’t in the same place as the refractor. Then you notice that there is no place to look through at the end of the tube. First of all, the front end is open and empty! You have to look all down the tube to see any sort of optics (i.e the primary mirror). It even invokes the old brass collapsing telescopes every pirate move seems to be require to show by law.Ĭonversely, the reflector (on the right) can be a bit odd-looking.

REFLECTOR VS REFRACTOR TELESCOPE TV

Now odds are, if you are looking at these two designs and don’t know a thing about telescopes beyond what TV & movies may show your first instinct will probably be to think of the refractor (the one on the left) as being what you think of as a telescope: a tube pointing at what you want to look at while on the opposite end of the tube is the place you look into. First let’s take a look at the two designs: We won’t talk too much about mounts right now. Now we are just concentrating on the telescope’s optical tubes. This astronomy hints post is going to double cover much of what we covered in our Telescope buyer’s guide but we hope to go into a bit more detail for those considering their first telescope – and that is the raging battle between reflectors (telescopes that use mirrors) and refractors (telescopes that use lenses).

$reflector vs refractor telescope$

Reflector vs refractor telescope