Telescopes - the amazing invention that allows us to look at objects far away.

Telescopes are mainly used for the observation of extraterrestrial objects such

as planets, stars, comets, asteroids, ect., ect.

 

OPTICAL TELESCOPES

All kinds of telescopes are around today but the first telescope was invented

back in around 1608 by Hans Lippershey, a dutch spectical maker. Though

there has been some controversy over him being the actual inventor because

Galileo was the frist to record the inventing of the telescope. Even though Hans

Lippershey was the first to invent the telescope and Galileo produced the first

one onn record it was Johannes Kelper who discovered the priciple of the

astronomical telescope with two convex lenses. Christoph Schiener was the

first to use this thoeryin a telescope in 1630. Due to the fact that curved lenses

blur when put close together, depending on the degree of the curve in the lens,

some telescopes had to be considerably long. Some even up to two hundered

feet long.

 

The concave mirror is used to produce the picture in a reflecting telescope. Sir

Isaac Newton was the first to produce a working version of the reflecting

telescope in 1663. Even though it worked veiwing was made quite difficult

due to the fact that the eye peice cut of a large amount of the indecent rays and

so did the head of th observer.

 

THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

The Hubble Space Telescope otherwise known as the H.S.T. is a large optical

telescope mounted on a space station. Because the H.S.T. is outside our earths

distorting atmosphere it can take pictures up to fifty times better than the

largest telescope on earth on a perfectly clear night. The H.S.T took some of

the best pictures in the world in 1994 when the cometShoemaker-Levy 9

crashed into Jupiter.

 

Click here to veiw some astronomical pictures