Telescope Buying Guide

Cullum Andrews asked:


My telescope needs a good dusting but I don’t want to scratch the mirrors and lenses. I have some sunglasses cleaner and the cloth that comes with it. At first this seamed ideal, but then it dawned on me that perhaps a the moisture can get between the lenses and fog up upon use also the mirrors can scratch from the cloth.

Chron asked:


I am writing a 10 page essay for my Engineering class and I need to write about the engineering involved in building the telescope (in particular, the lens and actual telescope). I need to use technical resources explaining how the hubble works and am having troubles finding any online.

Heather P asked:


For my open Physics lab, I’m observing the sun using a sun projection method. One of the things I need to do is project the image of the sun onto a screen and from this calculate its diameter. So I have the size of the image, its distance from the eyepiece, the eyepiece’s diameter, etc. Basically I’m looking for some help deriving the formula to get the size of the object being projected, when there’s two lenses involved in the telescope, the eyepiece and the telescope lens. Any help would be appreciated.

troyd.smith asked:


I have just come into possession of a used Telescope and am having trouble figuring out how it works. I have it assembled but can’t see anything through the eyepieces that were provided. there are 3 (25mm, 4mm, 2.5mm) and since it is winter the skies are cloudy and I can’t tell which lens is stronger so any info would be appreciated.