You know that classic science demonstration where you take two magnifying glasses of different focal lengths, and you put them in a cardboard tube and turn that into a telescope? Essentially, what Vivitar has done, is they’ve taken a small magnifying glass lens, put it in a plastic tube, and packaged it with some horrible eyepieces and a toy tripod. However traditionally, the department store refractor has at least had an acceptable objective lens, a coated or multicoated achromatic doublet, which was at least technically capable of forming good images, if all other concerns of mounting and eyepieces could be taken care of. These are typically hobbykillers because they can have frustrating mounts which make it difficult to find anything, and they have tiny, distorted eyepieces. They’re typically small thin little refractors on wobbly undersized tripods with mediocre eyepieces and overly high magnifications. Us telescope enthusiasts have been waging a war against the “department store refractor” for about as long as you could go to a department store and buy a telescope. Even stargazing with the unaided eye will bring you more joy. If you own this telescope and you think you like it, I am begging you to scrape together even the additional $40 for a cheap pair of 10x50 binoculars, you will be much happier. My general policy is that though I may point out the flaws in a telescope, if you have a telescope that I don’t like, and you like it, that’s fine. Don’t buy it if it’s on sale for $5, don’t buy it for full price. Don’t buy it as a gift for a kid, don’t buy it for yourself just to get started, don’t buy it assuming you can work with its quirks, don’t buy it as a joke for the experienced astronomer in your life. The equatorial mount is generally considered to be more helpful.Do not buy this Vivitar refractor telescope. From there you'll use the slow motion cable controls or panhandle controls to make the smaller movements. It takes more time to get accustomed to the equatorial mount each time you want to look at a different star or planet you have to unlock the axis and take aim at the heavenly body using the finderscope and lock it once you have the general location.It will then follow the motion of the sky around this point, moving from east to the west (as the stars move). The polar axis (which is the rotating part closer to the telescope's base) needs to be aligned to Polaris, the North Star. Equatorial mount swings across the celestial North to South and East to West.It is more simple than the equatorial telescope. Altazimuth mount operates my going up and down and side to side, making it easier for beginners to operate.You'll need to know which kind of telescope you have so you can learn how to operate your telescope. Telescopes typically come in two types: equatorial or altazimuth. This one tends to be more versatile, but they do tend to be more expensive than the other types. They are good photographic telescopes and they are a lot easier to carry than the reflector. The catadioptric is a compound telescope, combining both lenses and mirrors.Also, you can't view terrestrial objects with this telescope, because they will appear upside-down. This is one of the better beginner telescopes and it usually has pretty good visibility, although water has a tendency to condense on the optics of the telescope which can be irritating. The reflector employs a large concave mirror rather than a lens for the purposes of accumulating and focusing light.Unfortunately, it is very hard to see faint objects like galaxies and nebulae. It travels well and doesn't need much maintenance. This one is better for viewing the Moon and planets, usually giving a nice, crisp image. The refractor basically has a long thin tube with an objective lens at the front that collects and focuses the light.Which one you choose will be based on what you want to observe, where you are, and so on. There are really on three basic telescope types: refractor, reflector and catadioptric. Different telescopes are better for different types of viewing.
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