The view through a telescope

The View Through a Telescope The Moon is by far the most dramatic target for any new telescope. An alien landscape fills your eyepiece field with the same stark craters and mountains the Apollo astronauts skimmed over 25 years ago. Even a small telescope working at 100 power can show you the Moon as it would appear from a spaceship orbiting a few thousand miles above the lunar surface. Each night the view changes as sunlight creeps …

…and galaxies within reach of even small telescopes. Larger telescopes reveal more distinct views of these always faint targets. In 6- to 8-inch-aperture telescopes, for example, globular star clusters begin to resolve into spheres of uncountable stars, and galaxies reveal wispy spiral arms and elusive dust lanes. When shopping for a telescope, you really need to be concerned with only a few key points of comparison. By far the most important telescope specification is aperture.