It puts you in direct contact with the stars rather than forcing you to interact with a hand-held “interface”. This scope is user-friendly and does not involve complicated computers to operate.Even the eyepiece and finder optics come from your local discount store!! The focusser and finder scope are made from plumbing fixtures. The only parts you have to get from a special supplier are the primary and secondary mirror. You can make it and fix it with simple hand tools. Nearly all the parts for this telescope come from your hardware store.The telescope uses standard 1.25 inch eyepieces so you can upgrade to higher quality eyepieces anytime you want. The cage also serves as an “exo-skeleton” to keep the tube rigid and thus to keep the telescope well collimated and aligned. Second, the cage assembly allows you to twist the scope around for either right-hand or left-hand viewing, move the scope up and down for perfect balance without counterweights (no matter what kind of finder or eyepiece you use) and adjust the scope to make it easier for kids to look through.The base must be a bit bigger to do this effectively, but the mount is still reasonably light and is very stable. It is very comfortable to use with an inexpensive observing chair (see my page Backyard Observatory for a description). In most cases you do not have to kneel on the ground to use it. First the design puts the eyepiece at nearly eye-level.Some of them are not found on commercial scopes costing much more. You can buy the optics new for about $150, and that’s the heftiest single expense. The total out of pocket expense could be as little a two hundred dollars if you are careful with your pennies. Most anyone who wants a telescope can own a telescope like this. It is inexpensive, reasonably portable, gives good performance on planets, the moon and deep sky objects and is simple. Instead, astrophysicists use special detectors to observe gamma rays and to figure out where they come from in the sky.This six inch reflector is very close to the “perfect telescope” in many ways. They go straight through optics used for other wavelengths, making them impossible to reflect or refract. Gamma rays are the universe’s most energetic form of light. Engineers at NASA’s Goddard and Marshall Space Flight Centers have designed mirrors like these for missions like the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). Since there’s a lot of empty space in the middle of a single paraboloid, X-ray mirrors incorporate multiple mirrors as nested onion-like shells. This is called a grazing incidence mirror. To detect them, engineers turn the mirrors on their sides so the X-rays can skip off the surface. X-rays can simply pass through the atoms that make up most telescope mirrors. X-ray mirrors use the slightly angled side of the paraboloid. The Webb mirror, for example, is coated with a thin layer of gold so that it can reflect infrared light. Telescope mirrors are coated with different materials depending on the color of the light they need to reflect. (Backyard telescopes can also have mirrors, too.)Īn X-ray Mirror Assembly built for the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission consists of a primary and secondary mirror, each containing 812 nested foil mirror segments. Large mirrors can be made thinner and lighter than lenses of the same size, which makes reflecting scopes ideal for sending to space. Reflecting telescopesĪ telescope that uses a mirror as its primary optical element is called a reflecting telescope. The first telescopes, developed in the 1600s, were refractors, as are many backyard telescopes today.īut very large lenses make refracting telescopes large and heavy, which makes them difficult to use in space. Like eyeglasses, the lenses bend, or refract, light passing through them. Refracting telescopesĪ telescope using a lens for its main optical element is called a refracting telescope. The larger a mirror or lens, the more light it collects, and the better its ability to detect fainter objects. The size of the main mirror or lens determines how well a telescope can collect light. Astronomers observe distant cosmic objects using telescopes that employ mirrors and lenses to gather and focus light.
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