Telescopes

History

In 1609, Galile, an Italian physict and astronomer, directed the first telescope towards the sky. He detected craters in the moon and saw a ribbon of light known as The Milky Way today. The first telescope's lens had one-and-a-half-inch thickness.

General Information

What is a telescope?A telescope is a device used t­o magnify distant objects, usually in space.How they work:There are 2 types of telescope: the refractor telescope and the reflector telescope.

Refractor TelescopesThe tube holds the lenses at the correct distance from each other. The objective lens takes in the light and refracts it to focus in the back of the tube. The eye piece makes you see the image and magnifies the image. Eyepieces have shorter focal lengths than objective lenses.

Telescopes

Did you know that Earth's atmosphere distorts the images recieved by the telescope? This is why the Hubble was sent to the space.

First telescope

Reflector TelescopesThe light rays come into the telescope and hit the concave mirror which collects light and reflects it into focus. The reflected rays hit the small secondary plane mirror placed in the focal path of the concave mirror. The reflected rays of the plane mirror are then directed towards the eye piece and into the observers eye.

- Reflecting telescopes have common problems like spherical aberration, coma, and slight errors in grinding the mirros that can distort the image. - Refracting telescopes cannot produce images of the faint, deep-sky objects, like galaxies and nebulae whereas a reflector can.- Refracting telescope is aslo expensive to buy than the reflecting telescope.- Some lenses in the refracting telescopes cause a rainbow to appear in the image.

Advantages vs. Disadvantages

http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animations/telescopes/telescope10.html

Link to the animation:

First images recieved by the telescope