Benefits of a Bigger Aperture

The job of a telescope is to gather light and bring that light to the eyepiece or camera. The larger the telescope's aperture, the more light the telescope can gather making the image brighter, sharper, and able to produce more detail. The larger the lens or mirror diameter or aperture, the more light your scope gathers and the higher resolution (ability to see fine detail) it has.

Larger scopes also have longer focal lengths, meaning greater magnifications and image sizes are possible with both the eye and camera. Faint objects like nebulae and galaxies demand large aperture scopes. Planets need longer focal lengths for higher magnification views and large apertures for high resolution.

For information on which aperture is best for different kinds of objects? Click here