A Dobsonian telescope is an altazimuth-mounted Newtonian telescope design popularized by John Dobson in 1965 and credited with vastly increasing the size of telescopes available to amateur astronomers. Dobson's telescopes featured a simplified mechanical design that was easy to manufacture from readily available components to create a large, portable, low-cost telescope. The design is optimized for observing faint, deep-sky objects such as nebulae and galaxies. This type of observation requires a large objective diameter of relatively short focal length and portability for travel to less light-polluted locations.
An eyepiece, or ocular lens, is a type of lens that is attached to a variety of optical devices such as telescopes and microscopes. It is named because it is usually the lens that is closest to the eye when someone looks through the device. The objective lens or mirror collects light and brings it to focus creating an image. The eyepiece is placed near the focal point of the objective to magnify this image. The amount of magnification depends on the focal length of the eyepiece.
The Meade Instruments is an American multinational company headquartered in Watsonville, California, that manufactures, imports, and distributes telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, CCD cameras, and telescope accessories for the consumer market. It is the world's largest manufacturer of telescopes.
The Maksutov is a catadioptric telescope design that combines a spherical mirror with a weakly negative meniscus lens in a design that takes advantage of all the surfaces being nearly "spherically symmetrical". The negative lens is usually full diameter and placed at the entrance pupil of the telescope. The design corrects the problems of off-axis aberrations such as coma found in reflecting telescopes while also correcting chromatic aberration. It was patented in 1941 by Russian optician Dmitri Dmitrievich Maksutov. Maksutov based his design on the idea behind the Schmidt camera of using the spherical errors of a negative lens to correct the opposite errors in a spherical primary mirror. The design is most commonly seen in a Cassegrain variation, with an integrated secondary, that can use all-spherical elements, thereby simplifying fabrication. Maksutov telescopes have been sold on the amateur market since the 1950s.
Celestron is an American company based in Torrance, California, United States, that manufactures telescopes and distributes telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, and accessories manufactured by its parent company, the Synta Technology Corporation of Taiwan.
Custer Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Custer Institute. Located in Southold, New York (US), facing Peconic Bay and Shelter Island, Custer's location has some of the darkest skies on Long Island.
Naylor Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Astronomical Society of Harrisburg. It is located near Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, United States.
Questar Corporation is a company based in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It manufactures precision optical devices for consumer, industrial, aerospace, and military markets. Its telescopes produced for the consumer market are sold under the brand name "Questar".
Tasco sells consumer telescopes. Tasco mainly imports telescopes for amateur astronomers but has expanded into other optical products, such as spotting scopes, microscopes, binoculars, telescopic sights, and other rifle accessories. Tasco sells via retail stores, catalogs, and online retailers. Tasco is based in Miramar, Florida. George Rosenfield founded the firm as the Tanross Supply Company in 1954. It started as a distributor of fishing tackle and hardware. The name was later shortened to Tasco as its offerings expanded to include binoculars and eyepieces.
Sky-Watcher is a commercial distribution company established in 1999 by the Synta Technology Corporation of Taiwan that markets telescopes and astronomical equipment, like mounts and eyepieces, aimed at the amateur astronomical market. The products are manufactured at Synta Taiwan's Suzhou Synta Optical Technology Co., Ltd. in Suzhou (Jiangsu), China. The brand is distributed in Canada and Europe and, in the late 2000s, was extended to the USA market.
The Givatayim Observatory is a public observatory that was founded in 1968 by the Israeli Astronomical Association and the Givatayim municipality.
The Heights Observatory is an Astronomical Observatory at The Heights School in Modbury Heights, Adelaide, South Australia.
Explore Scientific is a company founded by former Meade Instruments Vice President of Brand Community Scott W. Roberts in 2008. Headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, the company designs and manufactures telescopes, spotting scopes, binoculars, microscopes and other scientific devices. Products are manufactured in China by JOC and imported. For Europe the Explore Scientific GmbH is responsible for the distribution of these products.
Observatory Robert A. Naef is an astronomical observatory located at Épendes, Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland at 7.13938 degrees east of Greenwich and 46.76236 degrees north latitude. Its parallax constants are : ρ sin φ' = 0.68632 and ρ cos φ' = +0.72501.
The SUNY Oneonta College Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Oneonta, New York. The observatory is home to the largest optical telescope in New York: a 1-meter Newtonian reflector. It is also believed to be the one of the largest telescopes open for public observing east of the Mississippi. The telescope was constructed by JMI Telescopes of Lakewood, Colorado.
The Hector J. Robinson Observatory, located in Lincoln Park, Michigan, is an Astronomical Observatory that features a 14-inch Celestron SCT telescope. Following renovation, the observatory resumed operations in September 2009, with First light ceremonies taking place in early September of that same year.
The Whakatane Astronomical Society is a voluntary, non-profit society for people interested in amateur astronomy in the Whakatane District of New Zealand. The society was founded in September 1960, and maintains a small observatory in Whakatane, which has been operating continuously since 1964. The society is affiliated with the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand.
Thomas Jasper Johnson or Tom Johnson was an American electronics engineer and astronomer who founded Celestron, a company which manufacturers telescopes, which revolutionized the amateur astronomy industry and hobby. Sky & Telescope magazine has called him, "among the most important figures shaping the last half century of amateur astronomy."
Suzhou Synta Optical Technology Co., Ltd. is a Chinese company located in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China, the primary manufacturing subsidiary of Synta Technology Corporation of Taiwan. It produces telescopes and astronomical equipment like mounts and eyepieces for the amateur astronomical market.
UCL Observatory at Mill Hill in London is an astronomical teaching observatory. It is part of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London.
