A Future Really Big Telescope

A Future Really Big Telescope

The technological change and evolution, especially in astronomy, has caused or resulted in more discoveries that no human thought would be possible decades ago. In today’s world, due to technological advancement, humans can tour and explore the universe periodically, which can be done through flying to space or use of modern, powerful telescopes. Astronomy has advanced and improved with time, and it has resulted in more discoveries of what is in space and with that people nowadays have a better understanding of the universe and how it works. The evolution of telescopes have come a long way from the simple gadgets that were invented in the old days to the modern high powered telescope we have today, and the evolution is still happening.

The first telescope was built by George Ellery Hale also known as the telescope builder. Hale initiated projects that resulted in the development of the first-ever telescopes used to observe space. The telescopes made by Hale were simple gadgets, but with time, he continued improving the size of his telescopes (Fraknoi, 2017).  Hale revolutionaries the telescope game as he played a part in building huge telescopes. Hale started with a 40-inch telescope, then constructed a 60-inch telescope, and in 1917 he built a 100-inch telescope. Hale surprised people with his final project before his demise where he wanted to create a 200-inch telescope which was later actualized and placed at the Palomar observatory ten years after his death.

The evolution of telescopes continued even after Haile died as in 1990, astronomy took a great leap by launching the Hubble into space (Fraknoi, 2017). The Hubble is referred to as the biggest space telescope so far. The Hubble was named after the man who discovered that the universe s was expanding in 1920 Edwin Hubble. The Hubble was the first observatory station to be launched in space, and it has enabled the astronomers to capture the most detailed photos of the solar system and other astronomy objects in space. The Hubble is jointly controlled by the space telescope science institute and NASA.

The work of Haile over the years have been improved and resulted in more bigger and powerful telescopes that are used in today’s astronomy. The scientists at NASA kept on making new improvements to the Palomar telescope, and 50 years later, an 8-meter telescope was created (Openstax, n.d). The telescope was named Gemini it is made of 8 inch thick mirrors, and it weighs at 24.5 tons twice as much as the Palomar telescope. After the Gemini further inventions and improvements were done, they resulted in the construction of ‘The Twin’. The Twin is a 10-meter telescope located at Mauna Kea which has 36 hexagon mirrors allowing 36 eyes to look at the space.

The old telescopes only observe light and patterns of the stars, but with innovations, the new telescopes of today can watch the space in infrared and not just visible light waves. Over the years from 1990, more telescopes have been developed all over the world to give humans an experience to look at the space and study it (Openstax, n.d). It is believed that with more innovation to the type of telescopes that are there in today’s world in future there will be very big and more powerful telescopes that could see more than what the Twin and the Gemini can see.

In conclusion, the development and improvement of telescopes over the years have taken the human knowledge about the space to a different level that no one ever thought. From observing light and star patterns to infrared and radio telescopes and from stationed telescopes on the surface of the earth to the flying telescope in space is a significant improvement. Scientists at NASA are always working to improve the current telescopes. With the type of technology present in today’s world, it is clear that the future telescope will be enormous, powerful and capable of things that the human mind cannot comprehend.

Reference

Fraknoi, A., Morrison, D., & Wolff, S. C. (2017). Astronomy. Retrieved from https://openstax.org/books/astronomy/pages/1-introduction

Openstax. (n.d). The Nature of Astronomy – Astronomy. Retrieved from https://openstax.org/books/astronomy/pages/1-1-the-nature-of-astronomy

Robertson, B. E., Banerji, M., Brough, S., Davies, R. L., Ferguson, H. C., Hausen, R., … & Wechsler, R. H. (2019). Galaxy formation and evolution science in the era of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Nature Reviews Physics, 1(7), 450-462. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-019-0067-x