Telescope, invention

The invention of the telescope arguably constitutes an essential milestone in the history of science. Galileo s turning to the sky an instrument - a very modest one by today s standard- would not only change radically our understanding of the universe, it would eventually shatter the foundations of science, philosophy, and faith. 

The telescope had not yet appeared. This invention would have to wait for Galileo to arrive on the scene. In 1610, pointing his newly created instrument towards the Moon, Galileo saw mountains. From this, he inferred that it was Earth-like. Today, we would be more inclined to say that the Earth is celestial, as I myself like to reiterate from one book to the next, for I find the fact so startling. At this moment, the distinction between the sublunary sphere, seat of transformation and death, and the superlunary sphere, eternal and perfect, was forever erased. And once the Earth was recognised to be celestial, the sky became mortal and comprehensible. 

UV, X-ray and gamma-ray observatories are all space-borne because these wavelengths are blocked by the Earth s atmosphere. And what could be more natural than to place eyes in orbits But who sent them up there and why Astrophysicists are no longer naive when it comes to the relationship between the tools of military surveillance and those of astronomy. And this is not a recent invention. Galileo himself offered his refracting telescope to the delighted dignitaries of the Venetian senate in order to draw attention to its military potential. His salary was immediately doubled and he was appointed professor at the University of Padua ... 

To a good analogy, before the invention of STM, the determination of surface structure was similar to the case of speculating on the landscape of a planet from information taken through an astronomical telescope. In analogy to spacecraft, the STM sends electrons to the vicinity of the "planets" to take direct, close-up photographs. 

Many elements are present in the earth s crust in such minute amounts that they could never have been discovered by ordinary methods of mineral analysis. In 1859, however, Kirchhoff and Bunsen invented the spectroscope, an optical instrument consisting of a collimator, or metal tube fitted at one end with a lens and closed at the other except for a slit, at the focus of the lens, to admit light from the incandescent substance to be examined, a turntable containing a prism mounted to receive and separate the parallel rays from the lens and a telescope to observe the spectrum produced by the prism. With this instrument they soon discovered two new metals, cesium and rubidium, which they classified with sodium and potassium, which had been previously discovered by Davy, and lithium, which was added to the list of elements by Arfwedson. The spectroscopic discovery of thallium by Sir William Crookes and its prompt confirmation by C.-A. Lamy soon followed. In 1863 F. Reich and H. T. Richter of the Freiberg School of Mines discovered a very rare element in zmc blende, and named it indium because of its brilliant line in the indigo region of the spectrum. 

Eyeglasses, a telescope, and a distillation apparatus—pivotal glass inventions. 

The Dutch scientist Hans Lippershey invents the telescope... 

Torricelli makes the first barometer using mercury in a sealed glass tube The Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek develops a microscope Isaac Newton invents a reflecting telescope... 

Using scientific methods is the best way to learn about how the world works, but science has its limitations. Scientists are sometimes unable to answer a question or solve a problem because they lack the necessary tools. This is often a temporary limitation because once the required tools are developed, science often provides answers. For example, scientists were unaware of the existence of Jupiter s moons before the telescope was invented. 

Typical of all human experience, seeing is believing, so the microscope has attracted much interest for many decades. All these inventions, of course, were basically initiated on the principles laid out by the telescope (as invented by Galileo) and the light-optical microscope (as invented by Hooke). Actually, no other scientific techniques have contributed so much to the scientific development in biology, medicine, and material science as the different microscopy techifiques. 

Before the invention of the telescope, Saturn was the most distant planet that anyone could see. It marked the end of the solar system. Naturally, it came to represent limits. Today, it remains the most distant planet that s easily visible with the naked eye, so that meaning still applies. But its image has improved. Thanks to the telescope and the Voyager space missions, everyone knows what Saturn looks like. Even people who have never looked through a telescope have seen pictures of its dazzling ring structure. And they know that it s the most beautiful planet in the solar system. 

Modern astronomy was bom with the invention of the telescope in Holland in 1608 and its immediate use and improvement in Italy by Galileo Galilei, who used it to discover the moons of Jupiter and the spots on the sun. 

Sir Isaac Newton was dissatisfied with the limitations of Galileo s refracting telescope, which operates like a spyglass, and he invented the reflecting telescope. 

Mention could be made of many debts to photography, including the discovery of radioactivity, which was directly due to the sensitiveness of the photographic plate, the discovery of stars too faint to be observed by the most powerful telescopes, the invention of photo-mechanical processes employed iu illustrating books and journals, photomicrography and its numerous applications, and the cinematograph, apart from its everyday uses in peace and war. 

One classic example of a scientific paradigm shift is the transition from a geocentric (Earth-centered) to heliocentric (Sun-centered) model of the universe. Invention and development of the telescope allowed for greater observation of the planets and the Sun. The theory that the Sun is the center of the universe around which the planets, including the Earth, rotate gained acceptance largely because of the advances in observational technology. 

Recall that in medieval and early Renaissance times, the earth was believed to lie at the center of the universe with other heavenly bodies moving around it (Figure 31). The telescope had not yet been invented, so the only known heavenly bodies were those visible to the naked eye. The seven... 

Janssen about 1590, the invention of the telescope by Hans Lippershey in 1608, and its quick deployment by Galileo Galilei. The modern-day optical and electron microscopes that are widely used in the inspection of lithographically patterned wafers ah trace their origins to Janssen s invention. 

The original CLEAN algorithm was invented to deconvolve effectively the Fourier spectrum from the PSF. In radio astronomy it was either impossible or impractical to arrange detectors on a regularly spaced grid due to malfunctioning of the part of equipment, occultations caused by the Moon, or if telescopes were operating over a... 

Although Bacon has been described as a physician rather than a chemist, we are indebted to him for many scientific discoveries. He was almost the only astronomer of his time and in this capacity rectified the Julian calendar which, although submitted to Pope Clement IV in 1267, was not put into practice until a later Papacy. He was responsible also for the physical analysis of convex glasses and lenses, the invention of spectacles and achromatic lenses, and if not for the actual constmction, at any rate for the theory of the telescope. As a student of chemistry he called attention to the chemical role played by air in combustion, and having carefully studied the properties of saltpetre, taught its purification by dissolution in water and by crystallisation. 

For many, the impact of scientific evidence, after invention of the telescope, was too sudden to shake their traditional beliefs, established over millenia. Even today there are those in the western world who feel more comfortable with fiat-earth cosmology and who regulate their fives arormd magical practices. There is a psychological reluctance to give up private beliefs, based on personal observation of the world, in favour of unfamiliar ideas, derived from poorly understood experiments, performed by strangers. 

Galileo also invented a compound microscope. In his 1623 book, the Assayer, Galileo discusses a telescope modified to see objects very close. Originally called an Occhialino (small eye glass), the word microscope was bestowed on this device by Galileo s fellow academician Johannes Faber. A telescope has a convex objective lens and concave eyepiece. In microscope, the eyepiece is convex and the objective lens is concave. Later on, a field lens was added at an intermediate position. 

Lenses have been made using glass since microscopes and telescopes were first invented. When visible light is used, this is still generally the case. For transmitted light, the challenge is usually to minimize absorption some telescopes, such as that on Moimt Palomar, use a very wide coated glass reflector. The critical factor is now not transmission but thermal expansion. 

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