The different numbers you see on scopes have specific meanings, and they vary from scope to scope. The first numbers you see may be “3-9” or “4-12” or something similar. Those numbers represent the magnification capabilities of the scope. For the above examples, the scop,es have magnification capabilities of 3x (three times larger than seen with the naked eye) to 9x and 4x to 12x. The last number you’ll see may be 40 or 50 or something similar. That’s the size of the scope’s bell—the end opposite the eyepiece—and the bigger the number, the bigger the bell. The bigger the bell, the more light the scope can gather in low-light conditions.