>>13643361I will try to explain some basics in laymens terms, as I am a laymen myself.
Most telescopes have two numbers divided by a / in their name, this describes their aperature and focal length.
My telescope is a skywatcher heritage 130/650, the first being the aperature, the second being the focal length, all in millimeters:
>aperature how wide the opening of your telescope is. This affects how much light it can gather, the bigger you can afford (and manage in size) the better
>focal lengththe distance light travels from the aperature to the eyepiece.
The relationship between aperature and focal length determines your magnification (in combination with an eye piece) and field of view.
>Eye pieces also have a number on them showing their focal length, also in mm. My telescope came with two different ones, a 25mm eye piece and a 10 mm.
To calculate the magnification, you simply divide the focal length of the telescope by the eye piece. For my telescope, thats 650/10= 65x magnification, or 650/25= 26x magnification.
>Barlow lensesAdditionally magnify. You place them inbetween the eye piece and the telescope. A 3x barlow lens then gives me 195x magnification with my telescope and the 10mm eye piece (65 multiplied by 3)
https://astronomy.tools is a handy website that lets you calculate the magnification of telescopes, eye pieces, with and without barlow lenses, and see how different objects in the sky like planets would look like through the telescope.
