Facts About Telescopes

Telescopes serve as our windows to the Universe, allowing us to observe and study the Sun, Moon, stars and cosmos above us. Theyvary in size from compact-or home use, to massive, taking up acres of land such as the Arizona observatory and regional planetariums .

Learning facts on telescopes not only gives you a look at history's amazing advances in technology, but it prepares you for taking your own journeys with astronomical enrichment. Telescopes help you view things you couldn't otherwise see with the naked eye, therefore revealing mysteries that men have taken interest in for centuries.

Galileo

The world's first complete functional telescope was created in 1609 by Galileo. This telescope was referred to as Galileo's Refracting Telescope, which relied on two lenses to enhance the lights from stars and other heavenly bodies. Although Galileo's telescope was fully functional, it posed its own issues with quality. For example, the style of lens and focal area caused images to become blurry. The refraction caused by the two lenses also split colors while the telescope was being used. This caused rays of color that interfered with the already blurry image. The device was quite small in comparison to the telescopes used today, even by standards of home use.

Related Facts

Galileo first coined his device the " telescopio ," which is Greek for " to see at a distance ."

Galileo discovered that other planets in the Solar System had their own moons orbiting them. He published these discoveries in a journal titled, " Message from the Stars ."

Sir Isaac Newton

Refracting telescopes were about 100 years old by the time Sir Isaac Newton built his own telescope. During this time in the late 1600s, Newton was a known natural philosopher, which was the precursor to the term scientist . Newton's telescope wasn't much larger than the later refracting ones of that era, but it was quite powerful. One thing that made his telescope better than Galileo's was that it was void of the rays of color that distorted images. These color rays are known as chromatic aberration.

Related Facts

Newton figured out that the chromatic aberration in telescopes was caused by the refraction. He remedied this by replacing the convex lens with a spherical one.

He replaced the main lens of the telescope with a mirror, for easier reflection of the sky's objects.

Notable Discoveries

Throughout the centuries-long history of telescopes, an astounding amount of discoveries have been made. If it wasn't for Galileo and his telescopio , man may have never had managed to step foot on the Moon during the late 1960s. Knowing some of the facts on telescopes and the numerous discoveries made by telescopes adds to the positive historical prominence of them.

Galileo alone learned the most important discovery of mankind and that is that the Earth is not the center of the Solar System .

Galileo's refracting telescope discovered Jupiter's and its4 largest moons.

Telescopes have discovered that the planet Venus experiences phases like the Moon. (Any planet between the Earth and the sun will show phases, that is a property of the geometry of the system.)

The National Geographic claims that the Hubble Telescope may have played a part in the discovery of dark matter.

NASA claims that the Hubble Telescopes have helped predict determine the estimated age of the universe, which is within 10% accuracy of 14 13.75 billion years old.

Some more notable discoveries

Hubble's discovery of the redshift and that the Universe is expanding

The discovery that galaxies are not part of the Milky Way but are independent "island universes"

Extrasolar planets

Dark matter

Evidence of glactic collisions

Evidence of black holes