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Finderscope 50
A finderscope is an accessory sighting device used in astronomy and stargazing, typically a small auxiliary refracting telescope/monocular mounted parallelly on a larger astronomical telescope along the same line of sight. The finderscope usually has a much smaller magnification than the main telescope, thus providing a larger field of view, useful for manually pointing (a.k.a. "slewing") the main telescope into a roughly correct direction that can easily place a desired astronomical object in view when zooming in. Some finderscopes have sophisticated reticles to more accurately aim the main telescope and/or even perform stadiometric measurements. Function and Design Finderscopes contain mechanisms to properly align them with the main telescope's line of sight. Accomplishing this alignment varies based on the design of the finderscope and its mount: usually on amateur telescopes it is done by three or six adjustment screws. Finderscopes usually come with a designation of the fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finderscope 50
A finderscope is an accessory sighting device used in astronomy and stargazing, typically a small auxiliary refracting telescope/monocular mounted parallelly on a larger astronomical telescope along the same line of sight. The finderscope usually has a much smaller magnification than the main telescope, thus providing a larger field of view, useful for manually pointing (a.k.a. "slewing") the main telescope into a roughly correct direction that can easily place a desired astronomical object in view when zooming in. Some finderscopes have sophisticated reticles to more accurately aim the main telescope and/or even perform stadiometric measurements. Function and Design Finderscopes contain mechanisms to properly align them with the main telescope's line of sight. Accomplishing this alignment varies based on the design of the finderscope and its mount: usually on amateur telescopes it is done by three or six adjustment screws. Finderscopes usually come with a designation of the fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Dickinson
Terence Dickinson CM (born 10 November 1943 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian amateur astronomer and accomplished astrophotographer who lives near Yarker, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of 14 astronomy books for both adults and children. He is the founder and former editor of ''SkyNews'' magazine. Dickinson has been an astronomy commentator for Discovery Channel Canada and taught at St. Lawrence College. He has made appearances at such places as the Ontario Science Centre. In 1994, the International Astronomical Union committee on Minor Planet Nomenclature named asteroids 272 Dickinson and 5272 Dickinson in honour of his “ability to explain the universe in everyday language.” Biography Dickinson became interested in astronomy at age five after seeing a bright meteor. When he was 14 he received a 60 mm telescope as a Christmas present, the first of nearly 20 telescopes he has owned. Past occupations include editor of ''Astronomy'' magazine and planetarium instru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Telescope Parts And Construction
Hardware Accessories *Finderscope *Iron sight * Reflector (reflex) sight * Cheshire collimator: A simple tool to collimate a telescope Control *Clock drive *GoTo Mechanical construction *Mirror support cell *Serrurier truss *Silvering Mounts *Telescope mount - Types include: ** Altazimuth mount ** Equatorial mount *** Equatorial platform **** Poncet Platform *** Fork mount *** German equatorial mount *** Springfield mount Optics 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 primary mirror designed to correct the optical aberrations of the mirror. **Schmidt corrector plate: An aspheric-shaped corrector plate used in the Schmidt telescope. **Meniscus corrector: A meniscus-shaped cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Pollution
Light pollution is the presence of unwanted, inappropriate, or excessive use of artificial Visible spectrum, lighting. In a descriptive sense, the term ''light pollution'' refers to the effects of any poorly implemented lighting, during the day or night. Light pollution can be understood not only as a phenomenon resulting from a specific source or kind of pollution, but also as a contributor to the wider, collective impact of various sources of pollution. Although this type of pollution can exist throughout the day, its effects are magnified during the night with the contrast of darkness. It has been estimated that 83 percent of the world's people live under light-polluted skies and that 23 percent of the world's land area is affected by skyglow. The area affected by artificial illumination continues to increase. A major side-effect of urbanization, light pollution is blamed for compromising health, disrupting ecosystems, and spoiling aesthetic environments. Globally, it has incr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star Hopping
{{unreferenced, date=February 2015 Star hopping is a technique that amateur astronomers often use to locate astronomical objects in the night sky. It can be used instead of or in addition to setting circles or go-to/push-to systems. The problem Many celestial objects of interest are too faint to be visible to the unaided eye. Telescopes or binoculars collect much more light, making faint objects visible, but have a smaller field of view, thus complicating orientation on the sky. The field of view of binoculars is rarely more than eight degrees, while that of typical amateur telescopes may be substantially less than one degree, depending on the magnification used. Many objects are best observed using higher magnifications, which inevitably go along with narrow fields of view. The technique Star hopping uses bright stars as a guide to finding fainter objects. A knowledge of the relative positions of bright stars and target objects is essential. After planning the star hop with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Telescope
An optical telescope is a telescope that gathers and focuses light mainly from the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, to create a magnified image for direct visual inspection, to make a photograph, or to collect data through electronic image sensors. There are three primary types of optical telescope: * Refracting telescopes, which use lenses and less commonly also prisms (dioptrics) * Reflecting telescopes, which use mirrors (catoptrics) * Catadioptric telescopes, which combine lenses and mirrors An optical telescope's ability to resolve small details is directly related to the diameter (or aperture) of its objective (the primary lens or mirror that collects and focuses the light), and its light-gathering power is related to the area of the objective. The larger the objective, the more light the telescope collects and the finer detail it resolves. People use optical telescopes (including monoculars and binoculars) for outdoor activities such as observational as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planets
A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual accumulation of material driven by gravity, a process called accretion. The Solar System has at least eight planets: the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These planets each rotate around an axis tilted with respect to its orbital pole. All of them possess an atmosphere, although that of Mercury is tenuous, and some share such features as ice caps, seasons, volcanism, hurricanes, tectonics, and even hydrology. Apart from Venus and Mars, the Solar System planets generate magnetic fields, and all except Venus and Mercury have natural satellites. The giant planets bear ring syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinity
Infinity is that which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol . Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions among philosophers. In the 17th century, with the introduction of the infinity symbol and the infinitesimal calculus, mathematicians began to work with infinite series and what some mathematicians (including l'Hôpital and Bernoulli) regarded as infinitely small quantities, but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes. As mathematicians struggled with the foundation of calculus, it remained unclear whether infinity could be considered as a number or magnitude and, if so, how this could be done. At the end of the 19th century, Georg Cantor enlarged the mathematical study of infinity by studying infinite sets and infinite numbers, showing that they can be of various sizes. For example, if a line is viewed as the set of all o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collimator
A collimator is a device which narrows a beam of particles or waves. To narrow can mean either to cause the directions of motion to become more aligned in a specific direction (i.e., make collimated light or parallel rays), or to cause the spatial cross section of the beam to become smaller (beam limiting device). History The English physicist Henry Kater was the inventor of the floating collimator, which rendered a great service to practical astronomy. He reported about his invention in January 1825. In his report, Kater mentioned previous work in this area by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Friedrich Bessel. Optical collimators In optics, a collimator may consist of a curved mirror or lens A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements''), ... with some type of light source and/or an im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beam Splitter
A beam splitter or ''beamsplitter'' is an optical device that splits a beam of light into a transmitted and a reflected beam. It is a crucial part of many optical experimental and measurement systems, such as interferometers, also finding widespread application in fibre optic telecommunications. Beam-splitter designs In its most common form, a cube, a beam splitter is made from two triangular glass prisms which are glued together at their base using polyester, epoxy, or urethane-based adhesives. (Before these synthetic resins, natural ones were used, e.g. Canada balsam.) The thickness of the resin layer is adjusted such that (for a certain wavelength) half of the light incident through one "port" (i.e., face of the cube) is reflected and the other half is transmitted due to FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection). Polarizing beam splitters, such as the Wollaston prism, use birefringent materials to split light into two beams of orthogonal polarization states. Anoth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sight (device)
A sight is an aiming device used to assist in visually aligning ranged weapons, surveying instruments or optical illumination equipments with the intended target. Sights can be a simple set or system of physical markers that have to be aligned together with the target (such as iron sights on firearms), or optical devices that allow the user to see an optically enhanced — often magnified — target image aligned in the same focus with an aiming point (e.g. telescopic sights, reflector sights and holographic sights). There are also sights that actively project an illuminated point of aim (a.k.a. "hot spot") onto the target itself so it can be observed by, such as laser sights and infrared illuminators on some night vision devices. Simple sights At its simplest, a sight typically has two components, front and rear aiming pieces that have to be lined up. Sights such as this can be found on many types of devices including weapons, surveying and measuring instruments, and nav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflector Sight
A reflector sight or reflex sight is an optical sight that allows the user to look through a partially reflecting glass element and see an illuminated projection of an aiming point or some other image superimposed on the field of view. These sights work on the simple optical principle that anything at the focus of a lens or curved mirror (such as an illuminated reticle) will appear to be sitting in front of the viewer at infinity. Reflector sights employ some sort of "reflector" to allow the viewer to see the infinity image and the field of view at the same time, either by bouncing the image created by lens off a slanted glass plate, or by using a mostly clear curved glass reflector that images the reticle while the viewer looks through the reflector. Since the reticle is at infinity it stays in alignment with the device to which the sight is attached regardless of the viewer's eye position, removing most of the parallax and other sighting errors found in simple sighting devices. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
