What is a telescope?
A telescope is an object that helps magnify distant objects. Telescopes allow people to further examine far objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation (light). The most common telescope is the optical telescopes which uses the lenses or mirrors to make the light emitted by the object appear larger. The telescope creates a larger beam of light that would be seen by the human eye and makes the image larger.
History
Although the first telescope wasn’t created at this time, Hans Lippershey, a German-Dutch lensmaker was the first person to think about the telescope as he wanted to see things that were far away in close distance (1608). It wasn’t until 1609 when Galileo Galilei, an Italian physicist built his own telescope (in the matter of days!) with a lens after hearing about the refracting telescopes that had appeared in the Netherlands around 1608.
Galileo was the first person to point the telescope towards the sky and was able to see craters on the moon. Galileo also saw a beam of light that was spread across the sky which was the Milky Way. Did you know that Galileo was also the first to discover that there were sunspots on the sun and that
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The telescope is vital to space research and as time progresses scientists may be able to find life in the universe. At one point, scientists believed that The Milky Way was the only galaxy. However, the telescope was crucial to discovering that there was much more to explore. Edwin Hubble had figured out that the “Andrmeda Nebula” was in fact another galaxy. He did this using a telescope (that was not very advanced) and discovered that the stars he was able to see were galaxies. To this date, we are unsure of what 95% of our universe is. As the telescope evolves, it will be a useful tool that will be essential to the discovering what makes up our