Reflecting Telescopes: How The Refracting And Reflecting Telescope Works
What Are Reflecting and Refracting Telescopes
Telescopes are tremendous instruments for exploring physical objects in the night sky and the all-important part of any telescope is the objective. The objective is what allows the light into the telescope enabling you to visualise the projected images from the heavenly objects you are observing. Telescopes with bigger objectives let more light in and that means a crisper image for the viewer.
The two primary designs of telescopes are reflecting telescopes and refracting telescopes. These are essentially quite similar in design apart from for the way in which they collect light.
The Primary Difference Between Refracting and Reflecting Telescopes
The objective in refracting telescopes is a glass lens that is located at the front of the telescope. The objective directs the light that it gathers and refracts, or bends, it to send it to the eyepiece, which magnifies the image. Refracting telescope technology is also an important elementin other occular equipment like binoculars, rifle scopes and spyglasses.
By comparison, reflecting telescopes are unique because the objective is a reflective mirror at the distal end of the telescope instead of a glass lens at the front. The mirror in a reflecting telescope has a concave shape, or a bowl-like shape, which permits it to catch the light in the central section of the mirror and transmit it as one stream of light towards the eyepiece so the image can be easily viewed.
Benefits of Using a Reflecting Telescope
Reflecting telescopes are favored by many astronomers for a range of reasons. A key reason is because there is less distortion with a reflecting telescope than with a refracting telescope since the mirror is able to gather and reflect all wavelengths of color consistently. The utilizing of the mirrors instead of glass lenses generally makes reflecting telescopes less expensive than refracting telescopes.
When mirrors are utilized rather than glass lenses, the telescope can be made larger to allow for the supports for the mirror to be located on the bottom end of the telescope. The larger the mirror that is used, the more light can be reflected and the better and clearer the resulting image will be.
Specific Issues with the Reflecting Telescope
Reflecting telescopes can have their own issues and problems as well. One problem can be the size of reflecting telescopes. As larger and larger mirrors are used, the telescopes have to grow in size to fit the mirrors inside. While you get better results with the larger reflecting telescopes, they are not what you would call easily portable and it can be challenging finding a place to keep them when you are not using them.
Another problem is that reflecting telescopes may require to have the mirrors alignment corrected from time to time to support them working perfectly and to maximize the light that is captured.
Many of the better known telescope brands provide both refracting and reflecting style telescopes for the unprofessional explorer.
Virtually all of the leading telescopes used in research are reflectors. Reflecting telescopes come in numerous design versions and may utilize extra optic elements to enhance image quality or position the image in a mechanically advantageous position. As reflecting telescopes employ mirrors, the design is occassionaly referred to as a catatropic telescope.