What advantages do reflecting telescopes have over refracting telescopes?

Answer 1

refracting telescopes use lenses instead of mirrors.

1. chromatic aberration: when light passes through a lens it is focused at different points. Blue focuses closer to lens and red farther creating a smeared image.

2. Some light is absorbed by lenses.

3. Lenses are heavy and can only be supported by the edge.

4. Lenses must have to optically acceptable surfaces whereas a mirror only needs one.

Answer 2

Reflecting telescope are made from mirrors, reflecting light to a single point, this in then reflected again to the eye piece lens.

Refraction telescopes work on the principal of light refraction to an eye piece lens, but to get a strong telescope you need a long focal length, this can only be achieved by large pieces of glass to make the lens.

The advantages ofreflection is that it is easier to make then a refraction telescope because all you need is materials with a shiny surface and no large, perfect pieces of glass need to be constructed.

It is also cheaper as you do not need to spend large ammounts of money on creating large glasslenses as you do with refraction telescopes.

Answer 3

One advantage of reflecting telescopes is that the mirrors can be very big. Large mirrors allow reflecting telescopes to gather more light than refracting telescopes do. Another advantage is that curved mirrors are polished on their curved side, which prevents light from entering the glass. Thus any flaws in the glass do not affect the light. A third advantage is that mirrors can focus all colors of light to the same focal point. Therefore, reflecting telescopes allow all colors of light from an object to be seen in focus at the same time.

Answer 4

Reflecting telescopes aren't necessarily better than refracting ones, but reflector telescopes are free of a few problems that refractor scopes have, such as chromatic aberration. They are also often cheaper than the same aperture size refractor telescopes since there's really only one (mirror) surface that has to be ground and polished to a specific shape (the primary mirror - the secondary mirror is completely flat in Newtonians, but do require shaping in Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes).

However, among the drawbacks is that the secondary mirror blocks some of the light falling in, and they suffer from coma, an off-axis aberration which causes imagery to flare inward and towards the optical axis. Reflector telescopes also may require frequent collimation (alignment) of the optics.

Answer 5

They're not. When you compare a reflector and a refractor whose objective

mirror and lens have the same diameter, the reflector is cheaper and easier to

build. That's why, since 1895, when the 40-inch refractor was installed at the

University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, all larger telescopes

have been reflectors.

Answer 6

They aren't. Or at least, they aren't necessarily.

It's possible to make larger reflecting telescopes because the mirror can be made arbitrarily large and supported with ... whatever, because the back side doesn't matter and no more light is lost reflecting off a large mirror than a small one.

Answer 7

Reflecting telescopes do not suffer from chromatic aberration, which is a common issue in refracting telescopes. Reflecting telescopes are also easier and cheaper to manufacture for larger sizes due to the single lens involved in the design. Additionally, the design of reflecting telescopes allows for a more compact and portable structure compared to refracting telescopes.

Answer 8

1. Smaller

2. Collect more light

3. Can more easily reproject the image being aimed at.