🪐 Space and stars 🔭 Space travel and observatories

The telescope

📖 In short

A telescope is an instrument that makes faraway things look close and clear. Astronomers use it to see planets, stars and distant galaxies. Without telescopes we'd know very little about the universe.

🤩 Did you know?

Newton made a mirror telescope in 1668.
Some giant telescopes have a mirror surface 10 meters across.
Binocular lenses can be about 2.5 centimeters across.
The James Webb telescope sees heat light that our eyes can't see.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 The lens telescope

In a refracting telescope a big lens at the front gathers light and a small lens at the eye magnifies the picture. About 400 years ago Galileo pointed a telescope at the sky and saw Jupiter's moons and the Moon's mountains.

🔍 The mirror telescope

In a reflecting telescope a big curved mirror gathers the light instead of a lens. Newton made the first reflecting telescope. Today's biggest telescopes have huge mirrors made of many pieces.

💡 Telescopes in space

Air and clouds make stars look shaky, so scientists sent telescopes into space, like Hubble and James Webb, which have sent back amazing pictures of very distant galaxies.

🎯 Your little telescope

With a small telescope or binoculars you can see Saturn's rings, the Moon's craters and Jupiter's moons. But never look at the Sun through it, because it burns your eyes!