Telescopes: Magnifying the Universe With Optics

Telescopes gather light with lenses or mirrors, making faint objects in the sky visible.
Refracting telescopes use convex lenses, while reflecting telescopes rely on curved mirrors.
The larger the lens or mirror, the more light a telescope collects, revealing dimmer stars and galaxies.
Galileo’s early telescope in 1609 showed craters on the Moon and moons orbiting Jupiter.
Modern telescopes use multiple mirrors to reduce distortion and improve clarity.
Space telescopes like Hubble avoid Earth’s atmosphere, producing sharper images than ground-based ones.
Adaptive optics technology adjusts for atmospheric turbulence in real time, sharpening star views.
Radio telescopes detect invisible wavelengths, turning cosmic radio waves into data and images.
Telescopes can peer billions of light-years away, acting like time machines into the universe’s past.
From backyard stargazing to giant observatories, telescopes expand our cosmic vision.