A telescope’s eyepieces are often one of the most underrated parts of the optical system. Many folks get caught up with aperture fever or drool over high-end apochromatic refractors while neglecting the fact that the eyepiece is almost 1/2 the optical system!
Most telescopes include 1 or 2 eyepieces. Depending on the model and the manufacturer […]
A couple of popular books we sell are Gallop and the more human oriented Swing. Both of these books use a nifty technology called Scanimation to produce the appearance of motion.
Scanimation is actually a new twist on an old optics technique known as Moire Patterns, where sets of parallel lines placed over each other […]
It is a new awesome astronomy picture every day! The best of the year 2009. It is the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009. Every day from Dec 1st to the 25th a new astronomy photo will be revealed! Enjoy!
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It’s a busy day and getting near the holidays, so we figured it would serve all well to reprint our Telescope Buyer’s Guide:
There are several telescope buyers guides available on the Internet, some good, some not so good. At Spectrum we are writing from our experience with customers and hope to make this simple and […]
Normally prisms need to be solid in order to properly break up light into a rainbow. A single sheet of glass or other transparent material is not enough to separate sunlight into its component colors. But working with huge chunks of transparent material can be tricky and expensive: The materials cost, the polishing of surfaces, […]
Spectrum has now added the StarBlast 6 to its exciting lineup of telescopes!
The Starblast 6 is the ‘big brother’ to the original Starblast. Like it’s little brother, it uses the same innovative ‘Dob & Arm’ setup that is easy to move, lightweight, and requires minimal assembly. But unlike the original StarBlast, the StarBlast 6 has […]
Back in May, several improvements were added to the darn-near-close-to-being-abandoned-as-junk Hubble telescope. Yesterday, those improvements, mostly vastly upgraded cameras and other equipment, were demonstrated for the first time! NASA’s announcement was made here.
That’s just the announcement of the release photos, what you want to see are some pictures!
More pics can be found here
There is also […]
About 10 years ago, green laser pointers first appeared on the market. At the time, Red laser pointers had already hit rock bottom and had actually started to rise again. You could get a red laser pointer for under $10 without searching very hard (you still can!.
At that time, the very first Green Laser […]
Its a slow day, being two days before our nation’s birthday, so we will keep things simple with this video of Poalrizing Film and what it does.
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Very recently, we had a customer in the store who was looking for a high power hand magnifier. Not a problem, as we carry a few models that can get almost as high as hand magnifiers can take a person. But when asked what level of magnification they were looking for, they replied: “30X or […]
