Meade 70AZ-ADR instruction manual Specifications, What do the specifications mean?

SPECIFICATIONS

Optical tube focal length . . . . . 700mm

Objective lens diameter . . 70mm (2.4")

Focal ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f/10

Mounting type . . . . . . . . . . . Altazimuth

Viewfinder Type. . . . . . . . . . . . Red dot

What do the specifications mean?

Optical tube focal length is simply a measurement of the length of the optical tube. In other words, this is the distance light travels in the telescope before being brought to focus in you eyepiece. Your tube is 700mm long.

Objective lens diameter is how big the lens is on your scope. Telescopes are always described by how large their objective lens is. Your telescope is 70mm or 2.75 inches. Other telescopes are 90mm, 8 inches, 16 inches, or even 3 feet in diameter. The Hubble Telescope’s objective lens has a diameter of 2.4 meters (that’s 7.8 feet across!).

The focal ratio helps determine how fast the photographic speed of a telescope is. The lower the focal ratio number, the faster the exposure. f/5 is faster than f/10. The faster the ratio, the faster exposure time is needed when a camera is hooked up to the telescope. Your telescope has slower focal ratio at f/10. Sometimes, astronomers use focal reducers to make slow exposure telescopes have faster focal ratios.

Altaz mounting simply means your telescope moves up and down (altitude or “alt”), and side to side, (azimuth or “az”). Other mounting configurations are available for other telescopes, such as equatorial mounting.

USE THE SPECIFICATIONS TO CALCULATE THE MAGNIFICATION OF YOUR EYEPIECE

The power of a telescope is how much it magnifies objects. Your 25mm eyepiece magnifies an object 28 times. Your 9mm eyepiece magnifies objects 78 times. But if you obtain other eyepieces, you can calculate how much magnification they have with your telescope. Just divide the focal length of the telescope by the focal length of the eyepiece.

FOCAL LENGTH OF THE TELESCOPE ÷ FOCAL LENGTH OF THE EYEPIECE = MAGNIFICATION

Look at the specifications. You will see that the focal length of your scope is 700mm. Let’s say that you have obtained a 13mm eyepiece. You can tell that what the focal length of your eyepiece is as it is always printed on the side of an eyepiece. Divide: 700 ÷ 13, which equals 53.8. Round this off to the nearest whole number and your new eyepiece magnifies objects 54 times.

If you use your Barlow lens with one of your eyepieces, it doubles the magnification of your eyepiece. Other types of Barlows can triple or further increase the power of an eyepiece. To find out how much your magnification is when you use a Barlow, multiply your eyepiece’s magnification by two.

EYEPIECE’S MAGNIFICATION X 2 = MAGNIFICATION WITH A 2X BARLOW LENS

Your 25mm low-power eyepiece magnifies an object 28 times. Multiply 28 by 2 and you get 56 times magnification with your Barlow.

It’s worth repeating: Keep in mind that a bright, clear, but smaller image is more interesting than a larger, dimmer, fuzzy one. Using too high a power eyepiece is one of the most common mistakes made by new astronomers. So don’t think that higher magnification is necessarily better—quite often the best view is with lower magnification value!

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