Galilean Telescope

Galilean TelescopeLong time ago a Dutchman invented a very curious tube. If you looked into it the distant objects seemed to be closer. Having heard about that at the age of 40 Galileo started working on his own spyglass. Galileo Galilei is an Italian philosopher, mathematician, physicist, mechanical engineer, and astronomer. He rendered a very significant influence on the science of his time. In 1609 Galileo designed his own spyglass. Later in 1611 a name "telescope" was suggested by a Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani. Galilean telescope consisted of a 1-meter piece of wood and two pieces of glass. Lens A which faces the observed object is called the object glass. Lens B into which the observer looks is called the eyepiece. If the lens is thicker in the middle than on the edges then it is called collecting or positive lens. Otherwise, it is a diverging or negative lens. A plano-convex lens served as the object glass of the Galilean telescope while plano-concave lens was its eyepiece. The telescope provided approximately a three-fold zooming. Galileo improved the lens production technology to the degree that had never been possible before. Thus he was able to design a telescope with a 30-fold zooming. For comparison, glass-making craftsmen of that time could make telescopes with only 3-fold zooming. Galileo made first telescopic observations of the sky. He discovered a new and unexpected picture of the world - the distant stars, the complex Milky Way, sun spots, solar rotation, and the moon's surface structure. Galileo's science activity and his personal scientific heroism contributed greatly to the victory of the heliocentric concept of the world.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• invention
• what inside