Tag Archives: telescopes

APF Telescopes used to Discover Nearby Planetary System

This week, a collective team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, UC Berkeley & the University of …

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Surface of Venus Revealed from Earth Telescope

As many of us know, Venus is covered in a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide that makes it very difficult for scientist to view the surface of Venus. In the past, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft has used radar to penetrate the…

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Dragonfly Telescope

Telescopes are instruments used in the observation of distant objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation (Wikipedia). Because of their necessity for …

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The Early Telescopes

The earliest working telescopes was made around 1608 with many who claimed its discovery. The design was simple; a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece allowed the user to see further. In 1655, astronomers had build more powerful telescopes using a design by Kepler. This design used a convex objective lens and a convex […] Continue reading

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What Comes After Hubble?

The Hubble Space Telescope, in use for about 25 years, will soon have to be retired in the next 5-10 years. Plans for a successor telescope eventually materialized into the James Webb Space Telescope, pictured below as a full scale model in Austin, TX. As big as a tennis court and as tall as a […] Continue reading

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Hubble Telescope

In April 1990 NASA launched the Hubble Telescope in an orbit around Earth. The telescope has been orbiting Earth for almost 25 years and is monumental in its contribution to science. The information gathered by the telescope has helped astronomers to narrow down the age of the universe down to a few hundred million years, […] Continue reading

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Limitations of Telescopes

  There are a few, relatively simple reasons why telescopes can only tell us so much about the universe. First of all, it takes large telescopes to see much detail. The additional light larger telescope lenses and mirrors collect provide more detail. However, the atmosphere distorts what can be seen by telescopes on Earth, as […] Continue reading

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Interfer… What did you say again?

To this point in history, we have created some pretty impressive telescopes. We are now able to see things that we could scarcely have even conceived of a hundred years ago. But even with the incredible advancements we’ve made so far, there’s good reason to think that we can even make what we have now […] Continue reading

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The Largest Telescope in the World

Larger telescopes allow for better angular resolution, which allows for us to discern between two light producing objects that are close together.  Therefore, telescopes are ever increasing in size to get better and better images.  Beating out telescopes called “Very Large Telescope” and “South African Large Telescope”, the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico is […] Continue reading

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The Power of the Telescope

History The first known telescopes came into invention sometime in 1608 by Dutch glass makers who had become quite skilled in making lens. In 1609 an Italian physicist and astronomer named Galileo decided to use this invention to look into the heavens. While it was rudimentary compared to the telescopes of today, this new tool […] Continue reading

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