How To Buy A Telescope There are numerous different types of telescopes, besides many different makes, and these different sorts are made to perform different duties. Therefore, before rushing in and purchasing a telescope you need to learn how to purchase a telescope first. However, you can cut out lots of useless searching and comparing if you can answer two important questions before you begin, namely: what do you require the telescope for and how much can you afford to spend? In numerous ways, it is best to begin with a fairly basic telescope, discover what its deficiencies are for what you would like a telescope for and then trade up into the correct type of telescope. Another decent manner to begin is with a pair of binoculars and then purchase a telescope that suits your interests. Binoculars will reveal a huge amount more that the naked eye - it is really surprising how much. If you would like to use your optical aid for several purposes such as bird-watching and astronomy, then binoculars are probably the answer until you choose to specialize in astronomy, at which time you can buy a telescope dedicated to that hobby and its incredible distances. The eyepiece is the most important part of a telescope and you will prefer one with adjustable magnification. The quality of this lens is vital: the view through it should be crisp and clear with very little to no chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration is a kind of colour distortion that manifests itself as halos surrounding exceptionally bright lights. Knowing where you will be using your telescope is also important, because of unfavourable reasons in cities. The skies over cities are often polluted with contaminants like smoke or smog, but they are always polluted with street light. This street light pollution can become a real annoyance, so ask if your telescope can become fitted with filters to mask out these pollutants. A telescope needs to collect light in order for you to see through it. This is accomplished by the primary lens and the amount of light that the telescope collects is in direct proportion to the size of this primary lens or objective. If you would like more light, you need an objective with a greater surface area. Light is needed rather than magnification occasionally, particularly while searching the stars because of the distances concerned. It really hardly matters whether you are magnifying a star 10 or 12 times if it is 1,000 light years away. However, what you can see, you want to be able to see clearly. Too much magnification can make directing the telescope very problematic for beginners unless there is a 'sight'. This is a weaker lens outside the main telescope that makes it easier to aim at the object that you would like to look at. It is not possible to cover all the aspects of purchasing your first star-gazing telescope in a short article, so be prepared to do some more research.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with the kids building set. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.