Question

There are different types of telescopes. I want you to make masterful and beautiful drawings of how each one redirects light, label its parts and what types of mirrors/lenses it uses. How does focal length affect a telescope?

Answer 1

The focal length affects in a telescope its field of view.

Step-by-step explanation:

Refracting telescopes use lenses, the convex lens in the aperture refracts the light since the beams are passing from one transparent media (air) to another (glass).

Then, the refracted rays go directly to the eyepiece (as is shown in the image below).

Reflecting telescopes, on the other hand, have a more complex configuration, in which they have a concave mirror that redirects light to another mirror or lens and then to the eyepiece.

However, professional telescopes (which often are refracting telescope) can have a variety of different lenses and mirrors in their configuration (see one of the images below for an example of types of lenses and mirrors).

The focal length is the distance between the objective (the mirror or lens) and the focal plane (the point at which the image is formed). The focal length affects in a telescope its field of view.

The larger the focal length, the smaller the field of view.