Gazing at the sky at night could be an exciting and stimulating moment for children, and the proper toddler telescope could power their interest and fascination in astronomy.

Essential Parts of a Telescope

Without the innovation of telescopes, we wouldn’t know so much about our cosmos today. Although these instruments have, since Galileo’s invention in 16th century, come a long, their fundamental parts for it to serves its purpose and function remain primarily unchanged. A telescope has several parts with diverse functions. But, not all of its parts are imperative when considering the fundamental purpose of the telescope.

Mirrors and Lenses

Each telescope comes in two lenses, the eyepiece and the objective lens. Both are biconcave, which means that both sides are concave outwardly, like a “flying saucer” for example. The objective lens is located at the end of the scope which points toward the thing or object you’re gazing at. For a hand-held scope, the eyepiece is found at the reverse end which removes the necessity for a mirror. For a model that is bigger, the eyepiece is located on side of the telescope; hence a mirror is needed for the gathered light rays to perpendicularly bounce from the objective lens in the direction of the eyepiece.

The Eyepiece

Don’t consider the eyepiece as just “secondary” part of the telescope. If you have excellent mirror and objective lens, the eyepiece must be of outstanding quality as well. When changing an ordinary eyepiece with an eyepiece that has more quality, you might be amazed at the difference it does in your viewing experience.

Structural Support

Majority of telescopes are attached on fixed stands, like a tripod, to ensure the instrument is still and steady for the visual field not to be disrupted. Usually, the part of the support or mount attaching the telescope to the stand lets for two separate axes of rotation. One axis is in a horizontal plane to be able to point it in different directions or directional pointing, and the other axis is in a vertical plane to get that given altitude, or elevation.