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The Five Numbers That Explain A Telescope

The document discusses 5 key numbers that describe the operation and performance of telescopes: 1. Aperture - The diameter of the main lens or mirror, which determines light collecting ability. Larger aperture provides a brighter image. 2. Focal length - The distance over which light is focused to form an image. Determines overall telescope length. 3. Magnification - Provided by eyepieces and calculated by dividing objective focal length by eyepiece focal length. Maximum useful magnification is around 50x the aperture in inches. 4. Focal ratio - Focal length divided by aperture. Determines field of view, brightness of extended objects, and suitability for planets vs. deep

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139 views8 pages

The Five Numbers That Explain A Telescope

The document discusses 5 key numbers that describe the operation and performance of telescopes: 1. Aperture - The diameter of the main lens or mirror, which determines light collecting ability. Larger aperture provides a brighter image. 2. Focal length - The distance over which light is focused to form an image. Determines overall telescope length. 3. Magnification - Provided by eyepieces and calculated by dividing objective focal length by eyepiece focal length. Maximum useful magnification is around 50x the aperture in inches. 4. Focal ratio - Focal length divided by aperture. Determines field of view, brightness of extended objects, and suitability for planets vs. deep

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mike
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© © All Rights Reserved
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The Five Numbers That Explain a

Telescope
May 4, 2016 By  Brian Ventrudo

A 14″ Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (credit: Celestron).

Before we launch into the pros and cons of the types of


telescopes available to stargazers today, let’s have a quick
look at 5 key numbers that describe the operation and
performance of every telescope, from the junk scopes in a
department store to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope.
Once you understand these 5 numbers, you will understand
the similarities and differences between telescopes, and you
will know how to choose the best scope for your own interests
and budget.

1. Aperture – Buckets of Light

As mentioned in a previous article, the most important


specification of any telescope is the aperture, the diameter of
the main lens or mirror of the telescope. More aperture makes
for a brighter image. Aperture also influences most of the
other key specifications of a telescope, including practical (but
non-optical) specs like cost and weight. A good backyard
telescope for us amateur stargazers has an aperture of 80 mm
to 300 mm (3.15” to 12”) or more. Some big billion-dollar
professional telescopes have mirrors with an aperture of 10
meters (400 inches), about the size of a small trout pond.

The light collecting ability of a telescope is directly proportional


to area of the lens or mirror, which is in turn related to the
square of the aperture. So a telescope with an objective mirror
of 200 mm aperture collects four times as much light as a
scope with a 100 mm mirror. The cost and weight of a lens or
mirror also go up proportionately, sometimes faster than the
square of the aperture. That’s the main tradeoff, and it’s one of
the reasons not everyone has a 25″ Dobsonian reflector sitting
in their garage. They are big and heavy and expensive.

The aperture of a lens or mirror is the diameter of its light collecting region. The light-collecting ability of

an objective lens or mirror is related to the square of the aperture.


For reference, the aperture of a healthy and dark-adapted
human eye is 7 mm. So even a modest telescope with a 100
mm aperture (about 4 inches) has (100/7)2 = 204 times the
light-collecting ability of the eye.

2. Focal Length – Show Me the Image

Once light falls onto a mirror or through a lens, it’s directed by


the curvature of the optic to come to a focus at a plane some
distance away. The length over which this happens is called
the focal length of the objective. At the focal plane of a lens or
mirror, you can actually see a real image of a distant object.
So if a telescope with a lens is aimed at a distant tree, for
example, or the Moon, an image of the tree or Moon would be
visible on a screen placed at the focal plane of the lens.

The focal length of the objective lens or mirror of a telescope


will influence to some degree the overall length of a
telescope. This 12″ telescope, which uses a large mirror to
collect starlight, has a focal length of about 60″. So the overall
length of the scope is quite long and can be unwieldy for
some. Some modern scope designs use a clever optical
layout to squeeze a long focal length into a small optical tube.
This telescope has an 8″ (200 mm) mirror with an 80″ (2000
mm) focal length, but the light folds into a tube less than 20″
(500 mm) long. More about this type of scope in a later
article…
The production of an image of a distant object by a lens. In astronomy, where the objects are essentially

at infinity, theimage comes to focus at a plane that passes through the focal point.

3. Magnification – Far and Away, Up Close

To get an image suitable for observing with our eyes, a


telescope uses a second lens, or collection of lenses, called
an eyepiece at the focal plane. The eyepiece magnifies the
image from the objective.  The eyepiece also has a focal
length.  The magnification of a telescope and eyepiece is very
simple to calculate.  If the focal length of the objective is “F”
and the focal length of the eyepiece is “f”, then the
magnification of the telescope/eyepiece combination is F/f. 
For example, if a telescope has an objective lens with focal
length of 1200 mm (about 48”) and it has an eyepiece of focal
length 25 mm (about 1”), then it will have a magnification of
1200/25=48x.  Nearly all telescopes allow you to change
eyepieces to get different magnifications.  If you want to get a
magnification of 100x with this example, you use an eyepiece
with 12 mm focal length.
The Moon seen through a telescope at high magnification.

Another rule of thumb… the maximum useful magnification of


a telescope is about 50x the aperture in inches.  Any higher
and the image gets too dim and fuzzy to be useful.  So a 4-
inch scope can get you about 200x before the image gets too
fuzzy and dim, a 6-inch scope gets you 300x, and so on.  This
is not a hard-and-fast rule.  Sometimes, when the atmosphere
is unsteady, you can only get to 20x or 30x per inch of
aperture.  With high-quality optics and steady seeing, you
might get to 70x or even 100x per inch of aperture, so for
example, up to 400x with a 4-inch scope.  But this is rare.
The aperture of the objective lens of this simple telescope is D. The focal length of the objective lens if

F. The focal length of the eyepiece is f. So the magnification is F/f. The focal ratio is F/D.

4. Focal Ratio – Faster, Brighter, Smaller

The third key specification of a telescope is the focal ratio,


which is the focal length divided by the objective diameter. A
long focal ratio implies higher magnification and narrower field
of view with a given eyepiece, which is great for observing the
moon and planets and double stars. For such objects, a focal
ratio of f/10 or more is ideal. But if you want to see wide views
of star clusters, galaxies, and the Milky Way, a lower focal
ratio is better. You get less magnification, but you see more of
the sky. Wide field telescopes have a focal ratio of f/7 or less.

Focal ratio also influences the brightness of extended objects


like a nebula or galaxy. For example, a telescope with focal
ratio of f/5 will show an image of four times the brightness as a
telescope with focal ratio of f/10, all other things being equal.
But the image at f/5 will be only half as large. However, the
brightness of stars, which are point sources of light, is
influenced only by the telescope aperture.

5. Resolving Power – Sorting One Star From


Another

Finally, the last important number of any telescope: the


resolution. The resolution of a telescope is a measure of its
ability to distinguish small details of an object or to distinguish
two very closely spaced objects from each other. Resolution is
important when you’re trying to separate two closely-spaced
stars, for example, or fine detail on the Moon or a planet. The
resolving power of a telescope with an objective of aperture D
(in millimeters) is

Resolving Power = 116/D (in arcseconds)

The resolution of a telescope is a measure of its ability to separate closely-spaced objects. The

components of the double star Porrima are separated by just 1.8″.

Resolution is directly proportional to the aperture of a


telescope. A 200 mm scope can resolve details as close as
0.58 arcseconds, twice as well as a 100 mm scope, all other
things being equal. (One arcsecond is 1/3600 of a degree).
But the motion and instabilities in the Earth’s atmosphere
often limit the practical resolution of any telescope to 1″ or
more.
 

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