Telescope: History And Why Was It Invented?

Do you know who invented the telescope and when it was invented? Let's take a closer look at the history of telescope invention.

People have always been fascinated by the sky, trying to observe the sun as it rises and sets every day, as well as the moon, which appears at night and disappears during the day. Observations of the sky were conducted with the naked eye in ancient times, but as technology advanced, telescopes became more common.

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Telescopes have allowed us to examine other planets, galaxies, nebulae, and a variety of other celestial bodies, removing sky observation from the Sun, Moon, and stars. Do you know who invented the telescope and when it was invented? Let's take a deeper look at the invention of telescopes, which serve as sky windows.

What is the definition of a telescope?

Telescopes are instruments that are used to observe objects that are too far away for the naked eye to see. The most popular sort of telescope is an optical telescope, which collects visible light rays from distant objects and focuses them to produce enlarged images of those things.

Other types of radiation that the human eye cannot detect, such as radio waves, X-rays, ultraviolet rays, and infrared rays, are collected by telescopes.

The First Telescope in the World

Although several persons claim to have invented the telescope in various parts of the world, we know that Dutch optician Hans Lippershey filed the first patent application for the telescope in 1608. As a result, many historians credit Lippershey with inventing the telescope.

Lippershey created the first telescope by putting two lenses within a long tube, one concave (thinner in the middle than the sides) and the other convex (thicker in the middle than the sides). The telescope used by Lippershey magnified objects three times. Lippershey continued his work on the telescope and built several telescopes for the Dutch government, making a fortune in the process.

_{SourceHans Lippershey uses his telescope to study the scene}

Galileo Looks Up At The Sky With His Telescope

As a result of Lippershey's achievement, more work on the telescope was done in several nations. Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist, was one of several who conducted research in this area. Galileo invented Lippershey's telescope in 1609 and was the first person to use it to observe the sky. Galileo examined the craters on the Moon with his 30x magnification telescope, discovered Jupiter's four moons and Saturn's rings, and calculated that our galaxy had numerous stars and that the Earth orbited the Sun.

Kepler's Telescope

To acquire a superior view, German astronomer Johannes Kepler utilized two convex lenses in the telescope he created in the 1630s.

The Reflecting Telescope of Newton

The hazy colored bands encircling the image in telescopes made observations difficult until the 1700s. Because light of different hues was refracted at different angles as it traveled through the lens, these fuzzy colorful bands appeared. To remedy this difficulty, Isaac Newton created a reflecting telescope, which collects light using a mirror rather than a lens. Reflective telescopes account for nearly all telescopes used for sky observation today.

_{SourceThe reflecting telescope of Newton}

The Largest Telescope

With a mirror diameter of 1.2 m, William Herschel, who discovered Uranus with his telescope in 1781, created the largest telescope to date in 1789. More light can be gathered by increasing the diameter of the telescope's mirror, resulting in sharper images. As a result, following Herschel, several astronomers attempted to build telescopes with greater dimensions. Gran Telescopio Canarias, in Spain's Canary Islands, has the greatest mirror diameter today (10.4 m).

The Event Horizon Telescope

Even an Earth-sized telescope is required to glimpse the black hole at the center of our galaxy because black holes take up so little space. Although the telescopes in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) array are modest individually, when they work together, they can see like an Earth-sized telescope.

The Event Horizon Telescope, which consists of eight telescopes spread over four continents, was instrumental in obtaining the first black hole image. Prof. Dr. Scientists, including Feryal zel, were able to produce an image of the black hole in the core of Messier 87 Sky Island by analyzing data collected by telescopes in 2019.

Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990.

Hermann Oberth, a rocket scientist, claimed in 1923 that a telescope in space could allow us to understand considerably more about the universe than telescopes on Earth. With the Hubble Space Telescope, this concept became a reality.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space on April 4, 1990, as a cooperative effort of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Hubble's dimensions and weight are comparable to that of a bus, and its mirror diameter is 2.4 meters. Hubble, which orbits our globe at a speed of 8 kilometers per second and is 550 kilometers above the ground, completes its orbit around our planet in 1.5 hours. Hubble's observations have and continue to give critical information on a wide range of topics, including the structure of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang and the birth of stars and galaxies.

_{SourceHubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990}

Kepler Space Telescope (KST)

NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope on March 6, 2009, following Hubble's launch. The original goal of Kepler's mission was to find planets circling stars other than the Sun in our galaxy. During its nine-year mission, Kepler detected 2,600 exoplanets. Exoplanet exploration has become a separate field of study thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched by NASA on December 25, 2021, was installed and began participating in scientific studies. The telescope will primarily observe infrared wavelengths, thanks to a mirror three times larger than Hubble's. The telescope will be able to study the universe's most distant galaxies and exoplanets in this manner, providing significant information to scientists regarding the acceleration of the universe's expansion.

_{SourceThe James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)}

As technology advances, so do the capabilities of telescopes used for sky observation. Telescopes will surely be one of our most valuable allies in the future, as they have been in the past, in our quest to discover the universe.

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References:

• https://www.slashgear.com/761081/who-created-the-telescope-and-why-was-it-invented/
• https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_telescope