Telescopes, eyes of astronomers

     The picture above was taken from the LABOCA camera on the European Southern Observatory (ESO)- operated 12-meter Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope with measurements made with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and others, to look at the way bright, distant galaxies are gathered together in groups or clusters.


     As you can see, it would required many telescopes to captured and calculated to produce a nice and clear image. Telescope has been a useful tool for many astronomers and play an important part in astronomy history. I'm going to go back many and many years to see how telescope was discovered and what make some telescopes so famous today.


     First thing first, we would have to ask ourself "What is a telescope and what is it do?".

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation, such as visible light. According to Tammy Plotner's article, "The very first telescopes were believed to have began to appear around the year 1608 and were credited to opticians Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen as a type of spyglass. These early refracting telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece and the telescope simply slid inside itself to focus. Galileo greatly improved upon this design and is often credited as being the first to invent the first astronomical telescope". Our telescopes today are much more technology advance than the first one and it also comes in in many sizes and shapes. One of our most famous telescopes today is the Hubble Space telescope. In 1977, Congress approved the Hubble Space telescope project and it went into construction that same year. The final piece were put together in 1985, but it did launch until April 25, 1990 due to the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. 




Here is a great slide show of telescopes throughout history, provided by National Geographic. Take a look.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/telescopes-interactive


http://www.universetoday.com/18210/telescope-history/