ASTR 001 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Refraction

• School: UPenn
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: ASTR 001
• Professor: Cullen Blake

Document Summary

Refracting telescopes light waves slow down when hitting glass or your eye b/c light travels more slowly through denser matter than through air for light coming in at angle, this slowing affects the side of the wave nearest the surface first, allowing the far side to catch up simplest, best known telescope that uses two lenses one lens (the objective) is large to collect as much light as possible the other (the eyepiece) takes the focused light from the first and produces an image the magnification is just the focal length of the objective divided by the focal length of the eyepiece problems w/these: long telescope tubes sag under gravity and require big telescope domes, a large objective requires a big, very expensive piece of glass and is very heavy (tube sag), hard to make it without impurities (these scatter light)