The Refractor Telescope is an invention of the 1600s made by Hans Lippershey in the Netherlands, which has the privilege of being the first used by military officials in their daily and strategic operations.
Its initial design was a combination of concave and convex lenses, but which was later improved and adapted by placing two convex lenses, which in turn allowed the image to be seen from top to bottom.
What is a Refractor Telescope
We say that a refractor telescope has been a kind of centered optical system, which in turn captures images of distant objects using a set of lenses in which the light is refracted.
That is why the refraction of light in the lens of the lens conceives that parallel rays, coming from a very distant object, converge on the point of the focal plane, and that allows us to show more substantial and brighter distant objects.
How a Refractor Telescope works
Now, the operation of this telescope is based on the refraction of the light emitted by the object, the light beam, when crossing the lens alters its trajectory and causes an increased image of the observed object.
Thus, this telescope consists of a lens formed by an achromatized converging lens with a substantial focal length and an eyepiece formed by a converging lens with a small focal length.
At the same time, it is to be noted that the image formed is inverted because the eyepiece has a convergent lens, and from the astronomical point of view, the inversion of the image is not a limitation.
These telescopes have the following parts: A long tube made of plastic, metal or wood, a glass lens on the front (objective lens), and the second combination of lenses (optics).
It also makes the tube put the lenses in place at the correct distance from each other, and the tube also helps keep out dust, moisture, and light that could interfere when the image is forming.
The objective lens collects the light and bends or refracts it to a focus near the end of the tube, and the optics bring the image so that you can see it and the magnificent, the optics have a shorter length than the objective lenses.
Advantages of the Refractor Telescope
- Easy maintenance
- A wide variety of sizes
- The images towards the edges are clear.
- The focal distances are high, which makes it ideal for observing planets.
Disadvantages of the Refractor Telescope
- They suffer from chromatic aberration, especially for very bright objects, so that in its manufacture, this defect must be corrected.
- Manufacturing over 1 meter in diameter becomes difficult due to the deformations suffered by the objective lens, due to its weight.
Mounts for Telescopes
An aspect usually undervalued but very important when using a telescope, mount, remember that a view of an unstable object is all that is needed to annoy us the pleasure of good observation, and a good mount can improve our looks.
There are two basic types of frames:
Equatorial mount: It is designed so that we can easily follow the movement of the sky while the Earth rotates, its actions indicate the north-south and east – celestial west in the eyepiece. This is very helpful when we try to place ourselves in the sky among the stars with a map.
Altazimuth mounts: They are more straightforward and only move up-down, left-right, we have to move the telescope often to follow the stars, moon, and planets, and an altazimuth mount is cheaper and lighter for the same degree of stability.
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