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Telescope Table History
By Ray Villard
Special to SPACE. com
posted: 03:43 pm ET
18 September 2000
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TELESCOPEtable | TELESCOPE | BEGINNINGYEAR OF OPERATION | SIZE | NOTES | | Galileosrefracting telescope | 1609 | 1.75"lens | Firstuse of telescope for astronomical observations. Discovered moons of Jupiter,sunspots, lunar mountains, Milky Way stars | | IssacNewtons reflector | 1672 | 1.5"speculum metal | Granddaddyof all modern reflectors | | WilliamLassells reflector | 1858 | 24"speculum metal | Satellitesof Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune | | Leviathanof Parsonstown | 1845 | 72"mirror | Discoveryof spiral nebula (later to be determined to be galaxies) | | Yerkestelescope | 1879 | 40"lens | Largestrefractor ever built. Practical limit for size of ground glass lens | | HookerTelescope | 1917 | 2.5meter mirror | Discoveredexternal galaxies, uniformly expanding universe | | HaleTelescope | 1948 | 5meter mirror | Discoveredquasars, measured expanding universe. | | MultiMirror Telescope (MMT) | 1979 | Six1.8 meter mirrors | Firstdesign to combine light from separate mirrors into a single "telescope" | | KeckTelescope | 1990,1996 (second Keck) | 10meter, segmented, 36 mirrors | Firsttrue multi-segment mirror telescope. Powerful probe of distances to extremelyremote galaxies & supernovae. Evidence for accelerating universe. | | HubbleSpace Telescope | 1990 | 2.4meter | 10Xsharper than groundbased telescopes. Flurry of discoveries include galacticblack holes, protoplanetary disks, precise expansion rate of universe,accelerating universe, quasar host galaxies, brown dwarf populations. |
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