Achromatic refractors
Classic two-element lens telescopes: cheap, sealed, maintenance-free, and visibly false-colour on bright targets.
1 in the catalogue
Telescope types
The optical design decides your cost per millimetre of aperture, your maintenance routine and your field of view. It decides image quality far less than the arguments about it suggest.
Visual and all-rounder designs
Telescopes you can look through, and in most cases photograph with too. This is where a first telescope almost always belongs.
ED refractors
Doublets using extra-low-dispersion glass: most of the colour correction of an apo for much less money.
1 in the catalogue
Apochromatic refractors
Three or more elements bringing red, green and blue to a common focus. Sharp, contrasty, and equally at home visually or on a camera.
1 in the catalogue
Newtonian reflectors
The cheapest way to buy aperture, in exchange for bulk and routine collimation.
1 in the catalogue
Dobsonians
A Newtonian tube on a simple alt-azimuth base. Almost always the most aperture per pound spent, and almost never an imaging platform.
2 in the catalogue
Schmidt-Cassegrains
A long focal length folded into a short tube. The most common serious all-rounder, and the default choice for planetary imaging at scale.
3 in the catalogue
Maksutov-Cassegrains
Small, sealed, high-contrast compound telescopes built around a thick meniscus corrector. Superb on the Moon, planets and double stars; slow and narrow-field for everything else.
1 in the catalogue
Dedicated and imaging-focused designs
Built around a sensor. Some of these have no eyepiece position at all, and comparing them on visual criteria is comparing something that does not exist.
Petzval refractors
Refractors with the field flattener built into the optical design: focus, attach a camera, and the stars are round to the corners.
1 in the catalogue
Imaging Newtonians
Fast Newtonians built around a camera: large secondary, low-profile focuser, and a coma corrector that is not optional.
1 in the catalogue
Ritchey-Chretiens
Two hyperbolic mirrors, no coma, long focal length. The classic small-galaxy instrument — and the least forgiving of a mediocre mount.
1 in the catalogue
RASA astrographs
An extremely fast Schmidt camera with the sensor at prime focus. There is no eyepiece and there never will be.
1 in the catalogue