July 14, 2009 | 24 comments

10 Telescopes That Changed Our View of the Universe [Slide Show]

Historic telescopes through the ages, from Galileo to the 21st century

By Saswato R. Das

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GALILEO'S TELESCOPE:

Galileo's instrument was a simple affair, a refractor telescope that had two lenses at the ends of two tubes, one of which slid into the other. Using it, he first observed the moon in the fall of 1609, then the moons of Jupiter, and sunspots. He also resolved faint nebular patches into stars. By March 1610, he had published Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), the landmark treatise that documented his observations and his explanations for them. Galileo postulated that there are mountains and plains on the moon, noted that he could see 10 times as many stars through his telescope as with the naked eye, and he saw the moons of Jupiter and deduced that they orbit the planet.

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Slide Show: 10 Telescopes That Changed Our View of the Universe

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