Telescope tech timeline

Galileo

1609

Galileo built one of the first refracting telescopes. Refracting telescopes work by using two lenses to focus the light and make it look like the object is closer to you than it really is. Galileos used one convex lens and one concave lens.

Johannes Kepler

1650

Johannes Kepler was responsible for the next big leap in telescope technology. He changed the eyepiece to a convex one so you would have a larger field of view. The kepler telescope only has convex lenses

Issac Newton

1680

Issac newton invented the reflecting telescope by replacing the one of the lenses with a mirror. Inside the telescope are mirrors that work at gathering and reflecting the image that you see in the sky. The mirrors are curved and reflect light into a eye piece.

New lenses

1700

Thanks to Pierre louis Guinard and Joseph Von Fraunhofer bigger and better lenses were created for refracting telescopes

Herschel

1789

Herschel built the biggest reflecting telescope of his time. it was 40 feet long and had a 48 inch mirror

New mirrors

1850

Justus von Liebig discovered a chemical process where you could coat glass in a thin layer of silver, which could be polished to make a mirror.

Radio telescopes

1900

Karl Jansky discovered that the center of the galaxy was emitting radio waves. His discovery led to a new field of research, Radio astronomy.

Edwin Hubble

1924

Discovered there were other galaxy's outside of ours. Played a major part in establishing extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology

Multi mirror telescopes

1980

only using one mirror had some down sides. Mainly that when it got to big it would deform because it was so heavy. To get past that road block people started using multiple mirrors to create one giant mirror.

Space telescopes

1990

By placing telescopes in space, astronomers could break free of the distorting and shielding effects of the Earth’s atmosphere.