
Galileo was the first to point a telescope skyward. The Senate, in turn, set him up for life as a lecturer at the University of Padua and doubled his salary, according to Stillman Drake in his book " Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography" (Courier Dover Publications, 2003). He made some improvements - his creation could magnify objects 20 times - and presented his device to the Venetian Senate. In 1609, Galileo Galilei heard about the "Dutch perspective glasses" and within days had designed one of his own - without ever seeing one. Detouche shows Galileo Galilei displaying his telescope to Leonardo Donato and the Venetian Senate. Your browser does not support the audio element.A 1754 painting by H.J.

Most observatories are built on mountaintops where the air is thinner and cleaner.The first telescopes were used by sea merchants and the military.The successor to the Hubble Telescope is the James Webb Space Telescope.This has enabled it to take some amazing pictures of far away stars and galaxies. Being outside the Earth's atmosphere allows the Hubble to view outer space without background light. This telescope was put into orbit around the Earth in 1990 by the Space Shuttle. One of the most famous telescopes in the world today is the Hubble Space Telescope. By using mirrors instead of lenses, Newton was able to make an improved telescope that did not suffer from some of the issues with the refractor such as chromatic aberration. In the late 1600s, Isaac Newton developed the reflecting telescope. Although this made the image appear upside down, it improved the usability of the telescope. Kepler used a convex lens for the eyepiece. The refractor was further improved by astronomer Johannes Kepler around 1611. Galileo made some improvements and first used the telescope for astronomy. The first telescope invented was a refractor invented by Dutch lensmaker Hans Lippershey in 1608. There are various designs of reflecting telescopes, but the original design by Isaac Newton is still popular today.Įxample of a Newtonian reflecting telescope In order to get the light out of the telescope, another mirror is used to direct the light to an eyepiece. A concave mirror is used to gather light and reflect it back to a focal point.

Reflecting telescopes use mirrors instead of lenses to focus the light. This makes the object seem much closer than it really is. This lens takes the light from the focal point and spreads it out across the retina of your eye. This lens is a convex lens that bends the incoming light rays to a focal point within the telescope. The first lens is called the objective lens. The basic refracting telescope has two lenses. You can go here to learn more about the refraction of light using lenses. Refracting telescopes use lenses to bend the light to a specific focal point such that the object will be magnified to the viewer. These telescopes are called reflecting telescopes. The other type uses mirrors to focus the light of the image. Telescopes that use lenses are called refracting telescopes. One type uses lenses to magnify the image. Magnification - The magnification of a telescope describes how much larger the telescope can make objects appear.The larger the aperture, the more light the telescope can gather. This feature is usually determined by the size of the aperture of the telescope. Light gathering ability - The better a telescope can gather light, the better you will be able to see far away stars and faint objects in the night sky.The two most important properties of a telescope are:
