Telescopes, Eyepieces, and Astrographs: Design, Analysis, and Performance of Modern Astronomical Optics

Telescopes, Eyepieces and Astrographs: Design, Analysis and Performance of Modern Astronomical Optics is about every optical element between your eye or your imaging sensor and the night sky. Three expert authors have optimized designs found in today's astronomy market, explored the origins of different systems, analyzed their optical properties and assessed their performance - and in this book, they present it to you in terms that a non-specialist can understand and put to practical use. Telescopes come in many varieties: but which best meet your needs? Each has good points and bad, advantages and disadvantages, advocates and detractors. Advertisements flash technical terms at the prospective buyer - but what's genuine technical talk and what's baseless sales talk? This book systematically explores each type of telescope, eyepiece, and optical accessory on the market today, and tells you what's inside it, what it does well, what it does poorly, and what performance you can expect if you buy that type of telescope from a reputable telescope maker. As a telescope buyer, you can assess properties like size, weight, compactness, and price because the upsides and downsides are fairly obvious. But what about the weaknesses that advertising copy never mentions? Field curvature and spherochromatism are seldom understood and appreciated. Will these affect your visual viewing pleasure? How much will they affect your CCD images? This book explores and explains subtle factors that you easily miss without informed help from the experts