Atmospheric Distortion Atmospheric Distortion: Moving or variable-temperature air above or inside the telescope which distorts the image. Much has been said in books and magazines on reducing air currents above and inside a telescope. The only idea covered here regards the design of the light baffles. In an open tube design, there will always be tube currents. Some telescope makers use an oversize tube to allow the inevitable currents to stay near the walls, out of the light path. Baffling a tube to reduce glare can interfere with this current, causing the air to flow into the light path as it moves past the baffle (tube current eddies). This can cause severe image distortion, wavy images, double images, and other problems. To solve this problem, the baffles can be made fairly shallow, and placed closer together. This allows the air moving near the tube walls to flow closer and stay out of the light path. Newt has an option (on the Edit:Specifications menu) to use fixed diameter baffles. When this option is on, all the baffles will be the same diameter as the front baffle. The front baffle diameter is designed to be the same diameter as the 75% zone cone of light as it passes through the front of the telescope.