How A Simple Invention Unlocked The Secrets Of The Cosmos
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A Humble Beginning
The telescope was not invented by Galileo but by Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey in 1608. He applied for a patent, but similar designs emerged, making its origins somewhat disputed.
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Galileo’s Transformative Vision
In 1609, Galileo Galilei improved the telescope’s design, using it to observe craters on the Moon, Jupiter’s moons, and the Milky Way’s countless stars, fundamentally altering perceptions of the universe.
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Unveiling Saturn’s Rings
In 1655, Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens used a more powerful telescope to discover Saturn’s rings. His observations debunked earlier theories that the planet had ‘ears’ or solid appendages.
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The Birth Of Reflecting Telescopes
Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope in 1668, solving the problem of chromatic aberration that plagued refracting telescopes by using mirrors instead of lenses.
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The Power Of The Hubble
Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth, capturing breathtaking images of deep space. Unlike ground-based telescopes, it avoids atmospheric distortion, offering unparalleled clarity.
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The Giant Of Mauna Kea
The Keck Observatory in Hawaii houses some of the world’s largest optical telescopes, using segmented mirrors to collect vast amounts of light, enabling astronomers to see billions of light-years away.
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Radio Waves Reveal The Invisible
Unlike optical telescopes, radio telescopes detect radio waves from celestial objects. The largest, China’s FAST, has a 500-metre dish that scans deep space for pulsars and alien signals.
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The James Webb Revolution
The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, uses infrared technology to peer through cosmic dust, unveiling the universe’s earliest galaxies and deep-space phenomena in extraordinary detail.
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A New Era With Adaptive Optics
Modern telescopes use adaptive optics to counteract atmospheric turbulence, producing clearer images by adjusting mirrors in real time, a technique that brings space even closer to our eyes.
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The Future Of Space Observatories
Upcoming telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) promise even more astonishing discoveries, with mirror diameters over 39 metres, capable of detecting Earth-like planets beyond our solar system.
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