How does light travel through a refracting telescoe?
Refraction means that the path of the light is bent slightly as it traverses through lenses (which happens because the material of the lens has a different index of refraction than air, and the lens is shaped in a particular way, which, for a telescope, results in magnification). This means that in a telescope that uses only refraction, the light travels from one end to the other, just being deflected slightly along the way. This is in contrast to a reflecting telescope, which uses bowl-like mirrors to bend the path of the light. In such a telescope, the light typically goes to one end, bounces off a (big) mirror, then back to the other end, bounces off another (small) mirror, before finally going back to the other side (through a hole in the big mirror) to go into an eyepiece. Of course you can make telescopes that use both reflection and refraction in many different combinations.
