The First Telescopes Tumans have always studied the sky At first Il they used their eyes to view celestial objects It was difficult to see stars and planets so far away Many remained hidden sight from
In the early 1600s Hans Lippershey was a Dutch lens maker He designed the first practical telescope A telescope is an optical tool It is used to make objects appear closer In 1608 Lippershey placed two lenses in a tube When looking through the device he saw objects appear three times larger Hans Lippershey 1570 1619 5
After hearing about the Dutch invention Italian physicist Galileo Galilei built his own telescope Galileo's telescope used two lenses to concentrate light A convex primary lens curved outward A concave eyepiece lens curved inward This delivered more light to the human eye than it could collect alone The lens refracted the light and formed an image This type of telescope became known as a telescope refracting
Galileos telescope could magnify objects 20 times Still it was not perfect The spherical shape of its primary lens made images blurry Also the lens split light into many colors This created a ring of color around a bright image This painting shows Galileo Galilei showing people how to use his telescope to view the sky night
