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The First Telescope
Hans Lippershey made the first telescope.The telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with convex objective lens. -
Galileo and his Telescope
He was not the first to invent the telescope, but the first to use it symmetrically to observe celestial objects and record his discoveries. He became famous when his book, translated to the Starry Messenger. The basic tool that Galileo used was a crude refracting telescope. -
Isaac Newton
He was the first to identify and begin to understand gravity. He discovered that white light is made of colors, Among the first to formulate the mathematical discipline of colors. In 1668, he created a small but powerful telescope that didn´t suffer from chromatic aberration. -
William Herschel and his Telescope
He began by putting togehter refracting telescopes from lenses and tubes he bought, but quickly decided that the refracters were too clumsy and long to handle. He later rented a small refracting telescope, hoping it would be easier to handle. He wanted to buy a larger reflector, but saw that none existed, so he decided to make his own. With the help of his sister, Carolyn, they began experimenting and building reflecting telescopes. -
Mount Wilson Observatory
The largest telescope from 1917-1949 was known as the 100 in Hooker Telescope. This telescope forever changed to way we understand the universe. George Hale wasn´t satisfied with the 60 in telescope, he wanted a telescope that could collect more light. The only glassmaker willing to make a 100 in mirror was the same person who made the 60 in mirror. The mirror had problems at first, but once it was installed, it could work for both photography and spectroscopy. -
Edwin Hubble
In the 1920s, he worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory, he showed that some of the most distant and faint clouds of light were actually entire galaxies. His greatest discovery happened in 1929, when he realized that the farther a galaxy from Earth, the faster it seems to move away. That formed the basis of the Big Bang Theory. -
The Hubble Space Telescope
Was a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, and still remains in operation. Its main 4 instruments observe a near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. -
WMAP
Stands for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe, is a NASA Explorer mission. Launched 2001, to make fundamental measurements of cosmology- the study of the properties of our universe as a whole.