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Mirrors and lenses are the critical light-bending components of a telescope. Objective: The first lens or curved mirror that collects and focuses the incoming light. Primary lens: The objective of a refracting telescope. Primary mirror: The objective of a reflecting telescope. Corrector plate: A full aperture negative lens placed before a ...
The Schmidt camera is a wide-field photographic telescope, with the corrector plate at the center of curvature of the primary mirror, producing an image at a focus inside the tube assembly at the prime focus where a curved film plate or detector is mounted. The relatively thin and lightweight corrector allows Schmidt cameras to be constructed ...
Light path in a Cassegrain reflecting telescope. The Cassegrain reflector is a combination of a primary concave mirror and a secondary convex mirror, often used in optical telescopes and radio antennas, the main characteristic being that the optical path folds back onto itself, relative to the optical system's primary mirror entrance aperture.
A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope design was originally used in spyglasses and astronomical telescopes but is also used for long-focus camera lenses .
People demonstrating a Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope at a sidewalk gathering. The Schmidt–Cassegrain design is very popular with consumer telescope manufacturers because it combines easy-to-manufacture spherical optical surfaces to create an instrument with the long focal length of a refracting telescope with the lower cost per aperture of a reflecting telescope.
One design of telescope uses a rotating mirror consisting of a liquid metal in a tray that is spun at constant speed. As the tray spins, the liquid forms a paraboloidal surface of essentially unlimited size. This allows making very big telescope mirrors (over 6 metres), but they are limited to use by zenith telescopes.
Newtonian telescope design. A Newtonian telescope is composed of a primary mirror or objective, usually parabolic in shape, and a smaller flat secondary mirror.The primary mirror makes it possible to collect light from the pointed region of the sky, while the secondary mirror redirects the light out of the optical axis at a right angle so it can be viewed with an eyepiece.
There are three main types of telescopes used in visible-light astronomy: Refracting telescopes, which use lenses to form the image. Commonly used by amateur astronomers, especially for viewing brighter objects such as the Moon, and planets, due to lower cost and ease of usage. Reflecting telescopes, which use mirrors to form the image ...