{"id":18481,"date":"2015-11-06T15:35:17","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T10:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yaabot.com\/?p=18481"},"modified":"2024-02-16T14:15:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T08:45:48","slug":"telescopes-the-future-of-our-eyes-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/telescopes-the-future-of-our-eyes-in-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Telescopes: The Future of Our Eyes in the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
What lies beyond earth? This question has beguiled us for ages. An interest in the cosmos started developing with the birth of philosophy itself, but there wasn’t much early man could do about it. The curiosity for the space could only be quenched by astute observation and fertile imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the beginning of the 17th<\/sup> century AD, stargazers and great thinkers simultaneously came up with an idea to delve further into the mysteries of space. It was deduced that since it didn\u2019t seem possible to reach out, at least not at the moment, we had to work on viewing techniques instead. And rudimentary telescopes were born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Varying combinations of concave and convex lenses, as objectives and eyepieces, or even vice-versa, were used. Hans Lippershey was one of the first to patent one such device. A year later, one man began using a similar device and made it famous. Galileo, the Italian astronomer and physicist has gone on to become synonymous with astronomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Galileo\u2019s telescopic observations were groundbreaking. They revolutionized the study of our universe. Celestial mechanics was an erroneous but popular theory since the age of Ptolemy. Galileo\u2019s work helped dispel it. His solar and lunar observations, discoveries of Jupiter’s moon, were some of his many radical works. Galileo’s observations proved the authenticity of Copernican views – suddenly, for us, the universe was not geocentric as the Church continually proclaimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the next 3 centuries or so, the telescopes underwent several makeovers. Refractory lenses, achromatic mirrors, paraboloidal reflectors all played a significant role in the remodeling of telescopes. With the opportune discovery of extra-terrestrial radiation by Karl Guthe Jansky, radio telescopes were soon to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n