Telescope magnification

I get asked a lot of questions from a lot of people. All of these questions are good, but some are so good they get asked a lot. This is one of those questions. The magnification of a telescope is how much bigger your target looks compared to looking at it without the telescope. If you like, it's how much closer the target is going to look. Magnification is expressed in multiples, so if your telescope has a magnification of "50 times", it means that whatever you're looking at will look 50 times closer, or will appear 50 times bigger than without the scope. Remember that your telescope can have several eyepieces. Changing eyepieces changes the magnification. So, for watching the Moon, your 25mm eyepiece might give you just the view you want. However, if you want to look at Jupiter, all you get with a 25 is a dot, so you need more magnification. The 10mm eyepiece will give you a much closer image. But to calculate it, there's some mathematics involved. Your telescop...