IMPORTANCE OF TELESCOPES

Telescope, device used to form magnified images of distant

objects. The telescope is undoubtedly the most important investigative
tool in astronomy. It provides a means of collecting and analyzing
radiation from celestial objects, even those in the far reaches of the
universe.
A telescope is an optical instrument using lenses, curved
mirrors, or a combination of both to observe distant objects, or
various devices used to observe distant objects by their emission,
absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation.
The first known practical telescopes were refracting
telescopes invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th
century, by using glass lenses. They were used for both terrestrial
applications and astronomy.
The reflecting telescope, which uses mirrors to collect and focus
light, was invented within a few decades of the first refracting
telescope. In the 20th century, many new types of telescopes were
invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s and infrared
telescopes in the 1960s. The word telescope now refers to a wide
range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of
the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of
detectors.
 ANATOMY OF ATELESCOPE

Every telescope has 3 primary pieces to it:

>Lenses and Mirrors

Each telescope is going to have an objective lens and an
eyepiece. These components are going to be biconcave, which means
the lens is curved outward on both sides. The objective lens will be
located at the end of the telescope that is pointed at the object you are
trying to observe. Additionally, the objective lens (refracting
telescope) or objective mirror (reflecting & compound telescope) play
a vital key role in computing the overall viewing effectiveness of a
telescope called the MUM Factor.

Eyepiece
The eyepiece is as important as the lens because it is what you
are going to look through. When you have a high quality eye piece,
this will make the image of whatyou're looking at that much clearer
and amazing.

fyou 're using a handheld telescope, the eyepiece is going to be

at the other end of the objective lens. However, if you 're using a
larger telescope, it will often be on the side or on top of the telescope.

Optical Tube Assembly

The body of the telescope is called the optical tube assembly.
This is where the objective (or objective) is located, and it is the
structure that supports it and allows you to look through it.
 Diagonas and Prisms
Telescopes are difficult to look through when you 're trying to
look at things that are directly overhead. Diagonals or prisms will
redirect the light so that it is easier to look through the telescope. The
diagonals are either on a plane mirror at a 90 degree angle, or a
prism. Aprism can reflect light at either 90 degrees or 45 degrees.
For astronomy, a mirror is more preferred because it is going to
reduce the light loss, but if you want a smaller telescope, a prism that
corrects the image can be preferred if you want to do terrestrial
viewing instead.

Focuser
The focuser is going to be the feature you use to bring the image
into focus. This can vary in design from telescope to telescope,
ranging from being able to move the eyepiece manually or a
motorized system that will move the mirror.

Mount
The mount is what you want to put your telescope on while you
are using it. Sometimes you'll see these called tripods, as they work
very similarly. There are two types of mounts that you could choose
from:

-Equatorial Mount
These mounts are aligned to the Earth's axis and they move
easily in any direction, which makes it easier for you to locate things
in the sky.
 Alt-Az Mount
These telescopes in altitude from horizon to zenith and azimuth
(North, East, South, West and is measured in how many degrees away
from due North).

Finder
The finder is a device on top of the telescope that will help you
find what you 're looking for in the night sky. These can be just a few
raised bumps, a hollow tube that's aligned with the tube, or red dot
and telrad finders.

APERTURE

By definition, an aperture is the size (in inches or millimetres) of

the optical piece collecting light in a telescope. The reason why
aperture is the most important feature one should take into account
is- The bigger the lens, the more light your telescope will be able to
receive. This will translate into a sharper, clearer image and will
allow you to look at more details in distant objects.

FOCAL LENGTH
The focal length is the distance, measured in millimeters, from
the center of the aperture to the point where the image is formed. This
point in the telescope is where the eyepiece connects and takes in the
light from the aperture.
MAGNIFICATION OR POWER

The magnification is the telescope focal length divided by the

eyepiece focal length, in millimeters. For example, if you use a
telescope of 1000mm focal length with a 25mm eyepiece, the
magnification would be 40x (1000mm ÷ 25 = 4O). Doubling the
power gives you one-fourth the image brightness and reduces the
sharpness by one half.

ETYMOLOGY

The word telescope (from the Ancient Greek tale "far" and "to
look or see"; teleskopos "far-seeing ") was coined in 1611 by the
Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani for one of Galileo Galilei's
instruments presented at a banquet at the Accademia dei Lincei. In
the Starry Messenger, Galileo had used the term perspicillum.
 HISTORY

Many people believe that the telescope was invented by Galileo

Galilei in the 1600s, but that is not correct. He didn't invent the
telescope; he was just the first person to look at the sky with one.
We don't know the name of the person who actually invented the
telescope, but many historians believe that the discovery of what two
lenses could do when held together was made sometime in the late
1500s.
With that said the first patent for a telescope was submitted by
Dutch eyeglass maker, Hans Lippershey in 1608. His device featured
a concave eyepiece that aligned with a convex objective lens, thus
boasting a 3x magnification.

Galileo hear about Lippershey 's design in 1609 and designed a

scope of his own. He made afew improvements on his original design
and then he presented the creation to the Venetian Senate, who then
was so marvelled by his work, doubles his salary and nade hin a
lecturer at the University at Padua.

When Galileo pointed his telescope to the sky, he was able to

see the mountains and craters that made up the moon 's
landscape. He
was also able to see the Milky Way. He also made the discovery that
there were sunspots on the sun and that Jupiter had moons orbiting
the gas giant.

The next great improvement to the telescope didn't come until

1668 when Sir Isaac Newton created the first reflecting
telescope.
This design used two-inch diameter concave spherical mirror, a flat
mirror that was angled, and a convex eye piece.
 In 1675, Christian Huygens is credited for developing aerial
telescopes, which were just objectives on top of a pole. He also
developed a compound negative eyepiece that utilized two air-spaced
convex lenses. This creation cancelled some of the chromatic
pollution that had a tendency to occur with a single lens eyepiece.

Fast forward several centuries to the 1970s when the European

Space Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) started to work together to build the Hubble
Space Station.

In 1990, a team of 5astronauts were the Discovery shuttle that

deployed the telescope in an orbit about 380 miles from the surface of
the Earth. It was then that the Hubble telescope transmitted the
astounding images that would make history.

TYPES
The name "telescope covers a wide range of instruments. Most
detect electromagnetic radiation, but there are major differences in
how astronomers must go about collecting light (electromagnetic
radiation,) in different frequency bands.
Telescopes may be classified by the wavelengths of light they
detect:

X-ray telescopes, using shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet

light
Ultraviolet telescopes, using shorter wavelengths than visible
light
Optical telescopes, using visible light
Infrared telescopes, using longer wavelengihs than visible
light
Submillimetre telescopes, using microwave wavelengths that
are longer than those of infrared light
Radio telescopes that use even longer wavelengths
 As wavelengths become longer, it becomes easier to use antenna
technology to interact with electromagnetic radiation (although it is
possible to make very tiny antenna). The
collected much like visible light, however in near-infrared
the
can be
submillimetre range, telescopes can operate morefar-infrared and
like a radio
telescope. For example, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope observes
from wavelengths from 3 um (0.003 mm) to 2000 um (2 mnm), but uses
a parabolic aluminium antenna. On the other
hand, the Spitzer Space
Telescope, observing from about 3 um (0.003 mm) to 180 um
(0.18 mm) uses a mirror (reflecting optics). Also using
optics, the Hubble Space Telescope with Wide Field Camera reflecting
3 can
observe in the frequency range from about 0.2 um (0. 0002 mm) to
1.7 um (0.0017 mm) (from ultra-violet to infrared light).
With photons of the shorter wavelengths, with the higher
frequencies, glancing-incident optics, rather than fully reflecting
optics are used. Telescopes such as TRACE and SOHOuse special
mirrors to reflect Extreme ultraviolet, producing higher resolution
and brighter images than are otherwise possible. A larger
does not just mean that more light is aperture
collected; it also enables a finer
angular resolution.
Telescopes may also be classified by location: ground
telescope, space telescope, orflying telescope. They may also be
classified by whether they are operated by professional
astronomers or amateur astronomers. A vehicle or permanent campus
containing one or more telescopes or other instruments is called
an observatory.
Modern telescopes typically use CCDs instead of film for
recording images. This is the sensor array in the Kepler spacecrafti.
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|Light Comparison
Name Wavelength Frequency (Hz) Photon Energy (eV)
Gamma less than 100 keV- 300+ X
more than 10 EHz
0.01 nm GeV
ray
0.01 to 10 nm 30 EHZ - 30 PHz 120 eV to 120 keV X
X-Ray
30 PHz - 790 THz 3 eV to 124 eV
Ultraviolet 10 nm 400 nm
390 nm-750 nm 790 THZ 40S THz 1.7 eV-3.3 eV X
Visible
Infrared 750 nm-lmm 405 THz- 300GHz 1.24 meV- 1.7 eV
300 GHz 1.24 meV- 1.24 ueV
Microwave l mm - l meter
300 MHz
Imm - km 300 GHz-3 Hz 1.24 meV- 12.4 feVX
Radio

OPTICAL TELESCOPE

An optical telescope gathers and focuses light mainly from the

(although some work in
visible part of the electromagnetic spectrumtelescopes increase the
the infrared and ultraviolet), 114/ Optical well as their
apparent angular size of distant objects as be observed,
to
apparent brightness. In order for the image telescopes work by
photographed, studied, and sent to a computer,elements, usually made
employing one or more curved optical
glass lenses andlor mirrors, to gather light and other
from light or radiation to a focal
electronagnetic radiation to bring that
for astronomy and in many non
point. Optical telescopes are used
astronomical instruments,
spotting
including: theodolites (including transits), spyglasses. There
camera lenses, and
scopes, monoculars, binoculars,
are three main optical types:
Binoculars
The refracting telescope which uses lenses to form an image.
The reflecting telescope which uses an arangement of
mirrors to form an image.
The catadioptric telescope which uses mirrors combined with
lenses to form an image.
AFresnel Imager is a proposed ultra-lightweight design for a
space telescope that uses a Fresnel lens to focus light.
Beyond these basic optical types there are many sub-types of
varying optical design classified by the task they perform such
as astrographs, comet seekers and solar telescopes.

RADIO TELESCOPES
Radio telescopes are directional radio antennas that typically
employ a large dish to collect radio waves. The dishes are sometimes
constructed of a conductive wire mesh whose openings are smaller
than the wavelength being observed.
Unlike an optical telescope, which produces a magnified image
of the patch of sky being observed, a traditional radio telescope dish
contains a single receiver and records a single time-varying signal
characteristic of the observed region; this signal may be sampled at
various frequencies. In some newer radio telescope designs, a single
dish contains an array of several receivers; this is known as a focal
plane array.
By collecting and correlating signals simultaneously received by
several dishes, high-resolution images can be computed. Such multi
dish arrays are known as astronomical interferometers and the
technique is called aperture synthesis. The 'virtual' apertures of these
arrays are similar in size to the distance between the telescopes. As of
2005, the record array size is many times the diameter of the Earth
utilizing space-based Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI)
telescopes such as the Japanese HALCA (Highly Advanced
Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy) VSOP (VLBI Space
Observatory Program) satellite.
Aperture synthesis is now also being applied to optical
telescopes using optical interferometers (arrays of optical telescopes)
and aperture masking interferometry at single reflecting telescopes.
Radio telescopes are also used to collect microwave radiation,
which has the advantage of being able to pass through the
atmosphere and interstellar gas and dust clouds.
Some radio telescopes are used by programs such as SETI and
the Arecibo Observatory to search for extra-terrestrial life.

X- RAY TELESCOPES

X-rays are much harder to collect and focus than

electromagnetic radiation of longer wavelengths. X-ray telescopes
can use X-ray optics, such as Wolter telescopes comnposed of ring
shaped 'glancing' mirrors made of heavy metals that are able to
reflect the rays just a few degrees. The mirrors are usually a section
of a rotated parabola and ahyperbola, or ellipse. In 1952, Hans
Wolter outlined 3 ways a telescope could be built using only this kind
of mirror. Examples of observatories using this type of telescope are
the Einstein Observatory, ROSAT, and the Chandra X-Ray
Observatory. By 2010, Wolter focusing X-ray telescopes are possible
up to photon energies of 79 keV.

GAMA - RAY TELESCOPES

Higher energy X-ray and Gamma-ray telescopes refrain from
focusing completely and use coded aperture masks: the patterns of the
shadow the mask creates can be reconstructed to form an image.
X-ray and Gamma-ray telescopes are usually installed on
Earth-orbiting satellites or high-flying balloons since the Earth's
atmosphere is opaque to this part of the electromagnetic spectrum. An
example of this type of telescope is the Fermi Gamma-ray Space
Telescope.
The detection of very high energy gamma rays, with shorter
wavelength and higher frequency than regular gamma rays, requires
further specialization. An example of this type of observatory
is VERITAS.
A discovery in 2012 may allow focusing gamma-ray
telescopes. At photon energies greater than 700 keV, the index of
refraction starts to increase again.

OTHER TYPES OF TELESCOPES

Astronomy is not limited to using electromagnetic radiation.
Additional information can be obtained by detecting other signals,
with detectors analogous to telescopes. These are:
Cosmic-ray telescopes detect cosmic rays and usually consist
of an array of different detector types spread out over a large
area.

Energetic neutral atom instruments study

the magnetosphere of various bodies by detecting fast noving
electrically neutral atoms created by the solar wind.
Neutrino detectors, the eguivalent of neutrino telescopes,
used for neutrino astronomy. They consist of a large mass
of water and ice, surrounded by an array of sensitive light
detectors known as photomultiplier tubes. Originating
direction of the neutrinos is determined by reconstructing the
path of secondary particles scattered by neutrino impacts,
from their interaction with multiple detectors.
Gravitational-wave detectors, the equivalent of gravitational
wave telescopes, are used for gravitational-wave astronomy.
Gravitational waves, caused by violent collisions in space,
are detected by extremely precise measurements of the
change in length of large earth-bound structures.
 TYPES OF MOUNT
A telescope mount is a mechanical structure which supports a
telescope. Telescope mounts are designed to support the mass of the
telescope and allow for accurate pointing of the instrument. Many
sorts of mounts have been developed over the years, with the
mnajority
of effort being put into systems that can track the motion of the stars
as the Earth rotates. The two main types of tracking
mount are:
Altazimuth mount
Equatorial mount
" Zenith
Transit
By the 21 century, although not structure a type of control
system called a Go To telescope was more popular. In this case a
computer software system can in part or whole direct the telescope to
acertain coordinate in the sky.

ATMOSPHERIC ELECITROMAGNETIC
OPACITY
Since the atmosphere is opaque for most of the electromagnetic
spectrum, only a few bands can be observed from the Earth's surface.
These bands are visible - near-infrared and a portion of the radio
wave part of the spectrum. For this reason there is no X-ray or far
infrared ground-based telescopes as these have to be observed from
orbit. Even if a wavelength is observable from the ground, it might
still be advantageous to place a telescope on a satellite due
to astronomical seeing.
TELESCOPIC IMA GES FROM DIFFERENT
TYPES OF TELESCOPE

wavelength
Different types of telescope, operating in different Together
bands, provide different information about the same object.
they provide a more comprehensive understanding.
BY SPECTRUM

Telescopes that operate in the electromagnetic spectrum:

Name Telescope Astronomy Wavelength

Radio astronomy more than l mm

Radio Radio telescope (Radar astronomy)

Sub millimetre Submillimetre telescopes* Submillimetre astronomy 0.l mm -Imm

Far Infrared Far-infrared astronomy 30 um - 450 um

Infrared Infrared telescope Infrared astronomy 700 nm-lmm

Visible Visible spectrum telescopes Visible-light astronomy 400 nm - 700 nm

Ultraviolet Ultraviolet telescopes* Ultraviolet astronomy 10 nm -400 nm

X-ray X-ray telescope X-ray astronomy 0.01 nm - 10 nm

Gamma-ray Gamma-ray astronomy less than 0.01 nm

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 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the Hubble space telescope was a major Turning point
in science because it has greatly changed Humans' understanding of
astronomy by allowing many important discoveries to be made and
many new technologies to advance and develop. For almost 500
years, we only improved in the telescope made in the 1600's made by
Galileo, and finally, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency)
constructed the next big thing, the Hubble Space Telescope, the
turning point. It's almost like a cycle, inprove until someone
advances, and then improve on that, and it keeps going. Hubble was
the start, next is the James Webb telescope, and the future beyond
that. Also, the Hubble Space Telescope affects people today in a
myriad of ways. As Christopher Go, an amateur astronomer and part
time lecturer, looked at the data that Hubble has given him, he
realized that he then had the upper-hand when it comes to primary
knowledge in astronomy. Christopher Go uses the HST very often to
monitor storms on the surface of Jupiter. Today's world has been
forever affected by HST because now, the human civilization can
thrive in their quest in conquering the knowledge of outer space, and
beyond.