Phuong Dang
Physic 1040
How To Choose A Telescope
When studying astronomy we all have wondered or wish for a telescope to see the beautiful skies above us or to explore the universe as our Earth orbits around the Sun. It’s like choosing your car, your house or even your friend so this is an important thing to consider. There are no best telescopes there are only right telescope which fits your personal need and experience. You can spend little and can get so much out of it or spend a fortune on a telescope but won’t get you anywhere and you might even hate it. So let’s look at your different options and this guide will hopefully help your choose the right telescope for you.
The most common thing when people buy a telescope is that they think of its power or the ability to magnify the object. This is not the most important thing to consider. The thing that we should care about is the telescope’s ability to gather light or the aperture because this will decide how much you can see with your telescope. There are ads out there advertising their telescope which say this have so much magnifying power in it like 450x, 575x or more, this is false information and a trick to get you into buying a poor quality telescope. You can have the super sharp and bright image only with 20x and 50x power.
To start with we can start at using the refractors telescope. This is an affordable, small, lightweight and portable telescope, which is around $100 to $350. Having this 60mm to 80mm aperture is great for our neighbor planets and is great to decide if this is your thing and should you continuing on doing this. This is not very good for the faint deep skies.
The Newtonian reflectors are awesome all-round telescopes. This is inexpensive telescopes providing you the fine apertures and is great for the planets and the deep-skies. The 3’’ and 4.5’’ mounted Newtonians can give you a nice view of the celestial luminaries. The 6” and the 8” will give you a deeper look at further fainted clusters and galaxies with normal dark skies. You should think about the weight of the telescope too, if you want to travel then reasonable weight telescope should be your friend. The recommended is the 6”, this scope can be operate by one person and can be one of the best beginner’s telescope. It’s around $300, which is reasonable.
If you travel a lot and wanting to bring your scope with you then you should try the schimidt-cassegrain telescope. Is nicely packed with fine aperture into an 8” compact tube and is super great for our neighbor planets and skies. This is very expensive telescope and we are talking about at-least $1000 the basic one. There are more to spend after the scope too like the mount so consider wisely.
Hopefully after some of the basic information on choosing your beginner’s telescope you can make a wise, considerate decision on choosing your first scope ever. Star gazing; planet viewing is a fun and healthy hobby that everyone should give it a try. It is very relaxing and sometimes can spark your inner power of curiosity to learn more about how the universe was formed, what will happen in the future and so on.
Cites: Wikipedia, http://www.actonastro.com/telescope.htm
ePortfolio Reflection:
This final blog post should be one paragraph and should include your thoughts on how the learning you have had in astronomy for this semester has related to other aspects of your learning at SLCC. How might the facts, study methods, or opinions expresed in the class affect your future learning at SLCC?
The experience of taking this class was extraordinary. I get to learn so much astronomy, which is one of my favorite subject. Not only did I learn about astronomy but this class also taught me about time management, self discipline and the abilities to perform better at school. I can not say that this was an easy class because the professor wants us to feel the pressure of works but this is good in the long run. The professor was trying to prepare us for a harder school, work and life situation. We were given a lot of readings, assignments, research and quizzes to do. Now, I'm even more excited about learning because I can achieve what I want to.
