Astronomy

The Dobsonian telescope has gone through a wide variety of iterations and innovations since it was first invented at the dawn of the Space Age, as well as a great deal of criticism.  However, today Dobsonians dominate observing fields, are common even at astronomical observatories, and are widely considered the best beginner telescopes, if not […]

When you start with astronomy from your backyard, you might not know where to start pointing your telescope in order to view the stars and planets. A star map is said to be useful because it can help you out, but it’s not very practical, and sometimes star maps you can find online are pretty

We’ve all been there; scrolling through images of planets and deep-sky objects on your phone, your eye settles on an astoundingly detailed and colorful nebula. Then you view an image of Jupiter with its intricate cloud belts shown in high-resolution detail. What, you wonder, would it take to produce results like that yourself? Checking the

Refractor vs reflector that is the question…  Most people seem to have a fairly generic idea of a telescope that they picture in their minds, particularly when shopping for one: A long, skinny instrument with a lens at one end mounted on a spindly but elegant tripod, with the eyepiece at the rear. This is

You’ve purchased a new telescope and can’t wait to use it to find celestial objects in the night sky. But although your telescope can be set up in minutes, that doesn’t mean that you can use it straight out of the box – it needs to be aligned!   Why do you have to align your

When you look through a telescope at the Moon, you might be a little confused as to why it looks flipped left to right or rotated on its side 180 degrees. Your finderscope perhaps produces an image similarly flipped upside-down. This can be a headache to understand, and many beginners often wonder why it isn’t

So you’ve bought yourself a shiny new telescope, or you’ve dug an old one out of the attic, or perhaps you have your telescope all set up and working nicely but you get upgrade-itis and have a nagging feeling that there is more quality that can be wrung from your telescope?  Whilst idly reading the

Focusing a telescope may sound intimidating, but it’s actually a remarkably easy process. In this article, we will explain what how to focus a telescope actually means, how focusers work, and why it’s important. Most telescopes have an external focusing device that physically shifts the eyepiece or camera back and forth along the optical axis