Select Your First Telescope (Episode II: Refractor)

Celestron NexStar 102 SLT

I have mentioned that there are mainly 3 types of telescopes. They are refractors, reflectors and catadioptrics. :) I am going to tell what are the advantages and disadvanges of them. I hope you can make up your mind after reading this article. ;) By the way, the long contents made up my mind to divide this post into total of 4 episode. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. :P

I am going to list out the advantages and disadvantages of refractor now.

Refractor

Advantages

  • Simplicity of design contributes to ease of use and reliability
  • Require little or no maintenance
  • Excellent for lunar, planetary and binary star observing, especially in larger apertures
  • Good for distant terrestrial viewing
  • Offer high-contrast images with no secondary mirror or diagonal obstruction
  • Render good color in achromatic designs and excellent in apochromatic, fluorite and ED designs
  • Sealed optical tube reduces image-degrading air currents and protects optics
  • Have permanently mounted and aligned objective lenses
  • Disadvantages

  • More expensive per inch of aperture than reflector or catadioptrics designs
  • Heavier, longer and bulkier than equivalent-aperture reflectors and catadioptrics
  • Cost and bulk factors limit the maximum practical aperture size
  • Not very suitable to view small and faint deep-sky objects(DSO) because of the limitations of practical aperture.
  • Let’s continue the list of reflector tomorrow. :yeah:

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