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Asked by Susan James. After he completed his first reflecting telescope in 1668, Isaac Newton found that he could observe the four Galilean moons of Jupiter – Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto – as well as the crescent phase of the second planet from the Sun, Venus. Newton’s intention wasn’t to discover new objects with his telescope.
Hershel was the first person to see a telescope for what it really is; a time machine. As we look up into space we can see the light from stars that no longer exist, it truly is a sky full of ghosts. In one second light travels 186,000 miles, that is nearly the distance between the earth and the moon. The moon is therefore around 1 light second ...
An alternative approach is to use the output of the Sun. Solar sails – huge lightweight mirrors pushed by the force of reflecting light – were first proposed in the 1920s, and recently tested for the first time on JAXA’s IKAROS mission, but Dr Janhunen has invented another option, the E-sail.
A reflector telescope, on the other hand, which uses mirrors to bounce incoming light through to a eyepiece lens, will be great at picking out dimmer objects such as galaxies or nebulae. A good beginners’ telescope should cost in the region between £200 and £500. Don’t forget to check out our feature for beginners in issue 7 of All About ...
This telescope detects infrared radiation. This type of radiation is associated with heat so any sources of heat can be detected. It is often said that space is very cold and this means that the concept of needing to cool something in space seems bizarre. The issue originates from two main reasons. The first is that space is practically empty ...
An apochromatic telescope has a multi-lens setup to eliminate chromatic aberration when stargazing. Chromatic aberration is caused by the difference in wavelength of various colours of light. In a single-lens setup, blue light is focussed closer to the lens and it has a shorter focal length. Red light is focussed further away from the lens.
The brilliant flash of an exploding star’s shockwave – what astronomers call the “shock breakout” – has been captured for the first time in the optical wavelength or visible light by NASA’s planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope. An international science team led by Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of ...
NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope is an example of a segmented primary mirror, with a diameter of 6.5 metres (21 feet) and 18 hexagonal segments. Next-generation space telescopes are expected to be as large as 15 metres (49 feet) , with over 100 mirror segments.
Curtin University researchers in Perth, Australia, are part of an international project that will use a huge underwater neutrino telescope at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea to help explain some of the most powerful and mysterious events in the Universe. Located at two sites at depths downward to 3500 metres (11,500 feet), the KM3NeT ...
By pushing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright, infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang.