Such a stark warning is necessary. As an example of the power of the Sun, consider that the Sun could easily contain 1 million Earths! This Sun is not a bonfire it is a galactic power station that sustains life on our planet and provides heat and light to all the planets in our solar system and beyond.

Once when using my telescope, I left it outside and put the cap on the eyepiece, but forgot to put the closure on the front to stop the light from entering. Within a few seconds I could smell burning. I took the eyepiece cap off to find the plastic had melted somewhat!

The Sun is very powerful and one not to be played with. However, with all these warning there are ways to look at the Sun in a safe manor, and whatever your budget, you can find a great way to see what the Sun has to offer us budding astronomers.

Looking at the Sun can be done with the following methods:

* Projection

* Special Lens

::: Projection - Safest Way To Look At The Sun With A Telescope :::

Possibly one of the best ways to look at the Sun is to use a principle of the Moon. The Sun is powerful and to counteract the mortal blow on life that would be had if the Sun was to shine constantly, we have a Moon which gives us a small portion of the Suns light in the wee hours of the night.

The aim of this principle is that we deflect the light of the Sun somewhere else and view that projection. Some telescopes come with a Sun projector which allows you to project the Sun onto this projection screen and see the details.

Now, you may be thinking, what good are you going to get from looking at the Sun in such a way? But, to the contrary, the Sun has much detail which can be seen with the projection method. For one, the Sun has much activity on it; Sunspots appear on the Sun and other phenomena. With the projection method we can even get a piece of paper and trace the Sunspots. Then over time, you can see what changes are happening on the Sun. What true science findings you can do with a telescope!

::: Special Lens - Safe Way To Look At The Sun With A Telescope :::

Again a couple of warnings, the cheap department store telescopes may have come equipped with a special Sun viewing eyepiece, however, you must never use this, especially if the telescope brand new was less than $150.

Most telescopes also come with fittings of different colors. These lenses are added to add color when viewing Mars, Saturn, the Moon (to make it darker, as a full Moon can sometimes be overpowering!).

Some people also think that you can burn fire and make soot on the lenses to make them Sun lenses, but this is so dangerous I warn you not to do it, as the cost to your eyes could never be recovered.

Special lenses do exist, and alone cost well over $100. These are very special lenses, and are the only ones to be used. My over caution is for great reason, the Sun is a dangerous place and getting your eyes to close to that heat can cause irreversible damage. Best be safe and use the projection method, it still serves to show you great detail, while being safe. Another suggestion is to keep young children supervised at all times when using any method to view the Sun.

Can You Look at the Sun Without a Telescope? is a post from: Meade Telescopes

Since Galileo gifted the world with this wonderful instrument, technology has driven it along to becoming very hi-tech and very modern. There are two types of telescopes that are available today. They are the Galileo or refractor telescope and the Newton or the reflector telescope. The basic difference is that the refractor telescope uses an objective lens. This makes the light bend towards the eyepiece. The reflector telescope on the other hand uses a mirror which reflects the light towards the eyepiece. Both are available so how do you know which one to buy?

First of all, whichever telescope you decide on, do not go by how much it magnifies as this is no criterion. Viewing large hazy pictures does not mean much. There are three factors you have to take into consideration when you are shopping for a telescope. The most important of these is the aperture. This is the opening through which the light comes in so a larger one will mean better clarity and better details. Next comes the resolution. This is what enables the telescope to give you an image with details. Go for one with a higher resolution. This together with a bigger aperture will ensure good images. The third factor is the focal length. This is the distance between the optical center of the eyepiece and the optical center of the mirror or the lens. This is what is responsible for the magnification. A longer focal length means better magnification.

Besides these, a telescope also has accessories. Let's take a look at what are the important ones and what are the ones it would be good for you to buy. Very essential are filters which reduce glare and make it easier to view objects which are distant. Also important is the Barlow lens which comes in different sizes and must be carefully chosen to fit the eyepiece. The eyepiece of course is crucial to the telescope. They come in various sizes and you can add more than one to see even very distant objects. You should also choose your mounts carefully for this is what the telescope stands on. It should be stable to give you the best possible view without any vibration or shaking.

Owning a telescope is like going on a voyage of discovery to worlds unknown, while you are standing in one place. It is a window to the whole universe and as you gaze through it, you feel you're a part of that too.

A Look Into The Cosmos: How Telescopes Work is a post from: Meade Telescopes

The largest Refractor telescope

Refractor telescopes are renowned for their absolute sharpness of image because they are composed of very large lenses of compounds of glass which gives them crystal clear images. But they are extraordinarily difficult to make in a large size. Their own weight distorts their shape and makes them unusable above a certain size.

The largest refractor in the world is the Yerkes telescope which has a primary lens that is 40 inches in diameter.  It was completed in 1897 and was built by the famous master optician Alvan Clark. It represents the pinnacle of refractor telescope making and no larger one has since been built in the hundred years since. Reflectors are much more feasible for larger sizes and there are many of this type that are extraordinarily large. It is with reflectors that we achieve very large instruments.  

Reflector telescopes come in two different types. The first type is the single mirror type where a single piece of glass is cast and polished to make the primary mirror. The second type is the segmented mirror where a series of hexagonal mirrors are assembled together into a single large mirror. This type of mirror looks much like the honeycomb from a beehive and this new technology is allowing telescope makers to make instruments larger than ever imagined.

The largest single piece of glass telescope in the world is the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona. It is a telescope composed of two separate mirrors that are side by side and work in tandem. The light from both of them are blended into one single image. Each mirror is 8.4 meters (330 inches) in width and when used together they create the equivalent of a mirror that is 11.8 meters (464 inches) across which is currently the largest light collecting size on Earth. It is located in Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona.

Segmented mirrors pose technology challenges that have been overcome in the past decade and now these multiple mirror scopes are being built in extremely large sizes that cannot be rivaled by single piece mirrors. Of the segmented telescopes where a series of honeycomb shapes are assembled together into a single telescope there are three different observatories with these largest of mirrors.

The South African Large Telescope (SALT) is the largest primary mirror scope in the world and it has a segmented mirror that is 11 meters (433 inches) across.

The Gran Telescopio Canarias or GTC is located on the island of LaPalma Spain and it has a segmented primary mirror that is 10.4 meters in diameter (409 inches) which makes it the single largest mirror in the world.

The Keck Telescopes are a pair of telescopes located at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Each mirror is ten meters (400 inches) in diameter.

Bigger Telescopes to come

There are even larger telescopes currently in the proposal, development, or construction stage.  Technology improvements over the past decade have made a new scale of telescope possible and this new scale is referred to as ELT or Extremely Large Telescopes and it is the next generation to come.  ELT’s are telescopes that are more than twenty meters in diameter which is double the size of existing telescopes.  And this doubling of size gives significantly more than double the light gathering power. Most of these scopes will be of the segmented mirror type but one notable exception is the Giant Magellan telescope which will be composed of seven spherical mirrors constructed together so they act as a single mirror.  This project is scheduled for completion in 2016. It will be located in Las Companas Observatory, Chile.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which is currently in development, will be thirty meters across and composed of segmented mirrors.  It is expected to be a telescope of unmatched performance and is predicted to be able to image planets circling other stars.  The current time line for this project is for it to be completed somewhere around 2017 – 2018.

What about the Famous Hubble Telescope?

The primary mirror in the Hubble is 2.4 meters across (94.5 inches) which makes it rather small compared to some of the giants listed in this article. So then why is it the most spectacular telescope ever created? The big advantage the Hubble has over all the other telescopes is that it doesn’t have to peer through the soup of Earth’s atmosphere.  And this advantage is staggering.  That is why the Hubble has brought us some of the most extraordinary images ever recorded.

What comes after the Hubble?

NASA is currently working on its next generation space telescope. It is called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The primary mirror will be 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter.  Launch is planned for 2013.

Since the invention of the first telescope 400 years ago man has been building ever larger telescopes. The telescopes to come will bring us images of planets around other stars and who knows, they may bring us images of the very birth of the universe we live in.

A Look at the Biggest Telescopes in the World is a post from: Meade Telescopes