Monday 9 July 2012

Things to Consider When Buying Amateur Telescopes

If you are going to look for astronomy telescopes, you would likely end up confused after going through a lot of options. This task becomes even more of a burden if you are choosing amateur telescopes because it would mean that you are not yet that experienced in buying the right scopes for your needs. If you find the right scopes for amateurs and even for kids, you might help contribute to the subject of astronomy as lately, more and more amateur astronomers aid in discovering new celestial objects.

Kids' Scopes

For parents buying telescopes for their kids, the most important thing to think about is how kids would be entertained and educated at the same time while using such tools. Here are some tips that might help in the selection process:

• Consider the kids' ages. Young minds would not be able to deal with complex features. The scope has to be as simple as possible so they can cope up with its use and feel at ease while doing so. They would not even mind whether the tool is cheap or expensive for as long as it works as intended and let them see the mysteries of the sky. These types of scopes can be bought in specialty stores, not toy stores, so you can be assured of their quality.

• Ask for help from experts in the form of the store's associate. Tell them about your kids' age and your intention of buying the tool. Even if it is a basic model, as long as it can be pointed towards the sky and magnify some of the objects in it, it will do. If your kids are older than ten years old, they might demand for scopes that would allow them to do more exploration so the tool has to have higher capacity for magnification. It should have higher focal length as well.

• Parents often choose reflector scopes for young kids. These prove to be the best telescope for astronomy if you are talking about kids because they are cheaper and simpler to use. However, they are larger and heavier to lug around compared to refractors.

• Choose popular brands when buying your kids' scope. It has to have a good reputation as a manufacturer of the said astronomy tool. For your convenience, it needs to have good customer service that you can rely on and that responds fast to your queries and concerns.

• Buy a stable mount of the scope. To avoid blurry images from shaking too much, you would need a table-top mount.

• Make sure that the telescope for your kids is easy to carry around. If they need to bring it a friend's house, they would not have a hard time doing so.

Beginners' Scopes

For first time stargazers, you need to think of certain things starting from the aperture to the magnification, resolution, and focal length even if you are looking for cheap refractor telescopes. First, the aperture refers to the ability of the scope to gather light to help you see celestial objects more clearly.

Second, magnification refers to how much you are going to enlarge an object. The more you magnify it, the larger it becomes.

Third, resolution refers to how sharp and clear the images are. The higher this is, the sharper the images are.

Last, focal length refers to how long the light has to travel within the tool. The higher this is, the bigger the object becomes, and the smaller its field of view is.

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