Telescopes
Telescopes
Hans Lippershey (1570 - September 1619) was a Dutch lens maker. Lippershey is believed to be the first to apply for a patent for his design, a few weeks before Jacob Metius (a Dutch instrument maker and optician), and making it available for general use in 1608. The telescope invented by Lippershey was composed of a convex and a concave lens, as this construction did not invert the image and had only a magnification of just 3x.
Galileo's telescope improved the original Dutch telescopes by the following year1609. Galileo had heard of the "Dutch perspective glass" which brought distant objects nearer and larger and states that he solved the problem of the construction of a telescope in one night. His first versions only improved the view to eighth power, but Galileo’s telescope steadily improved. Within a few years, he began grinding his own lenses and changing his arrays. Galileo’s telescope was now capable of magnifying about 10 times more than normal vision but it had a very narrow field of view.
One evening, Galileo pointed his telescope towards the one thing that people thought was perfectly smooth, the Moon. To his surprise he found it “”uneven, rough, full of cavities and prominences.” Despite Galileo’s telescope having flaws, such as a narrow field of view that could only show about one quarter of the lunar disk without repositioning, he created a revolution called Astronomy.
Over the following months Galileo’s telescope improved. On January 7, 1610, he turned his new 30 power telescope towards Jupiter, and found three small, bright stars near the planet. He made many more discoveries including: The appearance of bumps next to Saturn (the edges of Saturn’s rings), spots on the Sun’s surface, and seeing Venus change from a full disk to a slender crescent. Just like any modern scientist, Galileo Galilei published his findings in 1610 in a small book titled The Starry Messenger.” No, he wasn’t the first to point a telescope towards the heavens,
Hans Lippershey (1570 - September 1619) was a Dutch lens maker. Lippershey is believed to be the first to apply for a patent for his design, a few weeks before Jacob Metius (a Dutch instrument maker and optician), and making it available for general use in 1608. The telescope invented by Lippershey was composed of a convex and a concave lens, as this construction did not invert the image and had only a magnification of just 3x.
Galileo's telescope improved the original Dutch telescopes by the following year1609. Galileo had heard of the "Dutch perspective glass" which brought distant objects nearer and larger and states that he solved the problem of the construction of a telescope in one night. His first versions only improved the view to eighth power, but Galileo’s telescope steadily improved. Within a few years, he began grinding his own lenses and changing his arrays. Galileo’s telescope was now capable of magnifying about 10 times more than normal vision but it had a very narrow field of view.
One evening, Galileo pointed his telescope towards the one thing that people thought was perfectly smooth, the Moon. To his surprise he found it “”uneven, rough, full of cavities and prominences.” Despite Galileo’s telescope having flaws, such as a narrow field of view that could only show about one quarter of the lunar disk without repositioning, he created a revolution called Astronomy.
Over the following months Galileo’s telescope improved. On January 7, 1610, he turned his new 30 power telescope towards Jupiter, and found three small, bright stars near the planet. He made many more discoveries including: The appearance of bumps next to Saturn (the edges of Saturn’s rings), spots on the Sun’s surface, and seeing Venus change from a full disk to a slender crescent. Just like any modern scientist, Galileo Galilei published his findings in 1610 in a small book titled The Starry Messenger.” No, he wasn’t the first to point a telescope towards the heavens,