There is no single answer to this question.
The Cassegrain has a paraboloidal shaped main mirror.
The Ritchey-Chrétian has a hyperboloidal main mirror.
I have a Schmidt-Cassegrain which has a spherical main mirror.
Dall-Kirkham telescopes have an ellipsoidal main mirror.
The secondary mirror can have different shapes as well but I won;t get into hose. That's a separate issue.
a reflecting telescope is bigger because it uses mirrors, not lenses, and mirrors r bigger! :)
the reflecting telescope was!!
Newton did not invent the telescope, he invented the reflecting telescope. The reflecting telescope was a major improvement over the distorting refracting telescope.
No
"Optical", in this case, simply means that they work with light.
They all collect and focus light and other forms of electromagnetic radation.
A reflecting telescope uses mirrors while refracting telescopes uses lens. The refracting telescope also had chromatic aberration and bad resolution while the reflecting telescope had none of these.
A refracting telescope is a type of telescope that has a large thin lense at the front and a smaller thicker lense at the end where the eyepiece is. Refracting telescopes use lenses unlike reflecting telescopes that use mirrors to reflect the light. This is a good image of a refracting and reflecting telescope: [See related link]
A reflecting telescope is different from a refracting telescope because a reflecting telescope uses a concave lens, a plane mirror, and a convex lens. While a refracting telescope uses two lens.
no
"To build a large refracting telescope would require very strong supports to hold large enough lenses. These supports would tend to block out important light. So the refracting telescope is limited in its use. Today most large telescopes are reflecting telescopes." ~ BYU Home Study Astronomy course
A reflecting telescope uses mirrors while refracting telescopes uses lens. The refracting telescope also had chromatic aberration and bad resolution while the reflecting telescope had none of these.
the reflecting telescope was!!
Newton did not invent the telescope, he invented the reflecting telescope. The reflecting telescope was a major improvement over the distorting refracting telescope.
Refracting
No
Size... a reflecting telescope with the same power as a refracting telescope is much shorter. This is because, in the reflecting telescope, the incoming light is bounced off mirrors (often more than once) which means the physical length is much shorter than an equivalent refracting model.
"Optical", in this case, simply means that they work with light.