Reflector Telescopes
For astronomy students, reflector telescopes are of great utility and great beginner telescopes. These telescopes include an arrangement of curved mirrors. In the simplest units, there may be only one curved mirror. The mirrors together reflect light from a distant object to a focal point. The main curved mirror is called the primary mirror and its parabolic and reflective surface decided the focal point or focal plane of the telescope. The secondary mirror aids in showing the viewer the image as reflected from the primary mirror. A series of lenses in the middle help to magnify the image before it reaches the viewer.
Niccola Zucchi built the most basic reflector telescope in the beginning of the 17th Century. At that time, the mirror manufacturing process was still in its nascent stage and the secondary mirror could not be correctly placed in coordination with the primary mirror without blocking the path of light from the object being viewed.
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It was Sir Isaac Newton who gave the world the engineering secret to place a secondary mirror as a diagonal to the primary mirror and at an angle of 90 degrees. That technique is still in use and the telescopes are actually called today as the Newtonian Reflector Telescopes.
Reflector telescopes are some of the cheapest kinds of telescopes that give very good viewing results. Some changes and improvements have been made to Sir Newton's designs but only to help improve the focal length of the mirrors for a better viewing of even faint and distant objects.
Depending on subsequent design changes, reflector telescopes can be classified into different types. Reflector telescopes of the cassegrain type have a longer tube while some other models utilize an optical path that is folded. Several reflector telescopes that were invented over the years were eventually named after their designers. Some of the world's best telescopes are of the reflector kind including the huge Hubble Space telescope.
In case you are buying reflector telescopes for personal use, keep in mind the aperture rather than the size of the telescope. It is the primary mirror that matters and the better its focal length, the better the telescope. You will have to check the magnification strength of the telescope before you buy it.
You can ask the seller to help you adjust the position of the primary mirror by a method called collimation to 'tune' even basic Newtonian Reflector Telescopes. Several telescopes also come with tripods for better viewing or helping with accessories for photography.
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