Contact & corrections

Corrections come first

The single most valuable message you can send us is a specification we have got wrong. Every optical figure on this site — limiting magnitude, Dawes limit, focal ratio, exit pupil, useful magnification — is computed from a telescope’s published aperture and focal length. If one of those two inputs is wrong, every derived number for that telescope is wrong with it, and the page will state it with exactly the same confidence as a correct one.

So if you own a scope we cover and its real aperture, focal length or focal ratio differs from what we print — or if a manufacturer’s own specification sheet disagrees with the Amazon listing we read it from — please tell us. Send the page, the figure as printed, and what you believe it should be, with the source if you have one.

What we do about it: we re-check the figure against the manufacturer’s published specification and the listing’s own detail table. If the input is wrong we correct it at source, which recomputes every page that uses it in one pass. If the two sources contradict each other and we cannot resolve which is right, we do not quietly pick one — we flag the product as disputed and stop computing from it entirely, which is what we have already done to one listing that advertises a 150 mm aperture while its own table says 114 mm. Either way we correct in place and change the review date at the top of the page. We do not edit silently and pretend nothing happened.

Drifted listings are the other thing we need

Amazon listings change identity. A seller updates a product page and the same ASIN that was a 130 mm Newtonian last season now points at a different tube, a different bundle, or an accessory. Nothing on our end announces it, and the specifications we computed from stay on the page looking perfectly plausible.

If you click through and land on something other than the telescope we described, that is a report worth sending. Give us the page you were on and what you actually found. We re-verify the ASIN, and if it has drifted we either repoint it at the correct product or remove it — we do not leave a link earning commission on a product we never assessed.

What we can help with

Questions about how a figure was derived, or why our number differs from the one printed on a box, are genuinely welcome — the formulae and their derivations are written into the source for exactly this reason, and where we knowingly disagree with a manufacturer, our editorial policy says so and shows both numbers.

What we cannot help with

We cannot tell you how a telescope feels to use. We have never observed with any of them. Whether a focuser is still smooth after a year, whether a mount damps in two seconds or eight, how much one manufacturer’s optics vary between samples, how a warranty claim actually goes — those need hands on equipment over years, and an honest answer from us would be a guess dressed up as a figure.

For those questions, Cloudy Nights is genuinely better than any email we could send: decades of it, from people who have owned the thing and have nothing to sell you. They pay us nothing.

We also cannot diagnose your particular setup remotely, and we will not advise on solar observing by email. Looking at the Sun through a telescope without a purpose-made, undamaged front-aperture filter causes permanent blindness in less than a second, and that is not a subject for a stranger’s best guess.

Brands and PR

We do not accept sponsored posts, paid placements, gifted equipment, link insertions or “collaborations”, and we do not send drafts to brands for review before publication. Those emails will not get a reply. If you are a manufacturer and a specification of yours is stated wrongly here, that will get a reply — see corrections above, and please point us at the published sheet.

Reach us

Email [contact address — to be added before launch] at telescopeaperture.com. We read everything and answer what we can, and corrections go to the front of the queue.