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The telescope has been a marvellous invention. Though the telescope has many advancements every few decades, the parts of a telescope have always remained the same. We look at telescopes and wonder what are the parts of a telescope?

What are the parts of a telescope?
First we must realize when asking what are the parts of telescope, that there are two types of telescope. One type of telescope is the refractor telescope, and the other is the reflector telescope. Both telescopes use same principles to do the job. That is taking a long distant object and magnifying and focusing the light rays to the point of your eye.

The are many different parts that make up the teleskope and they are in some way slightly similar to the makeup of binoculars. The first part of a telescope is the optical tube assembly(OTA). The OTA is in fact the main tube assembly which is made up of several different optical parts, mirrors and lenses.

The eyepiece is the section that a person looks through and depending on the type of telescope, some may have extra individual lenses located inside. The next part of a telescope is the focuser. The focuser enable the viewer to change his or her focus to help create a cleaner view of the object they are targeting.

The finder is one of the most important parts of a telescope as it enables the user to track down objects in space. Without the finder it would make it almost impossible to find objects that are long distances away.

The Barlow lens is an extra lens that only the most expensive telscopes have. It has a negative effect on increasing the focus length, therefore changing the magnification of a telescope.

The mount is the part of a telescope that holds the tellescope in place. There are three types of mounts – the altitude azimuth, the equatorial and the dobsonian. There are other types of mounts but they are generally use for larger, advanced telescopes that aren’t available in retail stores.

The telescopes tripod is the last part of a telescope and come in lots of different sizes and varieties. They are made up of 3 legs that are used to hold the telescope up to a height where people can stand to use it. Most telescopes you buy come with a telescope tripod but if yours didn’t then you can generally get one for pretty cheap from most optical stores.

So that’s all the parts of a basic telescope, of course if you were to pay more for an advanced telescope, you would get more parts. The biggest point to consider when buying a telescope, is not the magnification, but how big the lens is and the quality. With a bit of research, you can find the best telescope in the world!