Telescopes; they are not new scientific creations. Yet, they are inventions that underwent a lot of changes throughout the past decades. Like any other creation, the telescope started off simple, small in size and thus with minor results. Yet, as the years passed by, the telescopes underwent evolution. Such as an ape who developed characteristics and fought natural selection to progress into a human being, the telescope went through a similar experience to reach its current state.
The first telescope was born in 1609. Created by Galileo, an Italian physicist and astronomer, the new invention was small in size and above all, terrestrial. Blurry images were collected, yet they identified mountains, craters and other details from the Moon. In addition, Galileo identified a line of dust and light, which sooner became labeled as the Milky Way galaxy that we inhabit.
In his book Sidereus Nuncius or ‘Starry Messenger’, published in 1610, Galileo talks about the building of his first telescope as well as his extraordinary discoveries, which were ‘recent’ one of a kind at the time. Nevertheless, the most interesting discovery treated in the scientist’s book is the detailed description of the moon. From a far away point of view, human beings assumed the moon surface to be perfectly smooth and flat. However, from his terrestrial telescope, the Italian scientist proved that the lunar surface is covered with cracks and mountains. Later in time, the heterogeneous surface of the Moon was to be partially explained by asteroid attacks. In addition, another important discovery made by Galileo is the satellites around the gas giant Jupiter. Therefore, it was apparent that our planet Earth was not the only midpoint of rotation in the solar system.
By the time Isaac Newton was the father of all scientists, more complex and larger telescopes were created. However, the proverb ‘the bigger the better’ is not applicable in this situation… scientists discovered that the main problem was not in the Earth’s atmosphere rather
than in the size of the terrestrial telescope.
The previous point could be explained by comparing the view from a ground-based telescope to what we see with the naked eye. When human beings gaze at the sky, hey see stars slightly moving and twinkling. However, this movement is a distortion created by the Earth’s atmosphere, while in reality the starlight is actually steady! In addition, the Earth’s atmosphere was also blocking radiations such as X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet and infrared rays.
Started from the bottom now we are here in outer space