Galileo’s Telescope

Galileo’s Telescope

The History of Galileo’s Telescope

In 1608, a phenomenal discovery of the spyglass swept the whole of Europe. All the big opticians started manufacturing telescope. Hans Lippershey of Holland was the first person to make it and then rest is a history. The telescope consisted of a magnifying lens which would just magnify the image few times. Due to this, manufacturers all around the world started improving the technology and working on the lens. All these manufacturers wanted to take hold of the government.  The friends of Galileo had full trust in him that he would improve the telescope and he could do justice to its power.  They convinced the government to have trust on his skills and that he could make good changes to the telescope.

Galileo's Telescope 

Galileo started to work on telescope and he worked very hard to improve magnification of the telescope. He made few changes and his telescope was a combination of glass lenses that could enlarge the image of an object. He slowly improved his designs and as time passed by his telescope showed immense improvement. Now it can enlarge the image up to ten times. The only flaw that remained in his telescope was that it provided a very narrow view.

What Galileo Saw With His Telescope

Galileo with his telescope saw the gemstone of the sky which was perfect smooth as people called it. He saw the moon. But to his surprise he finds various faults with this perfect smooth structure. He saw that the moon was not smooth; rather it was rough, uneven and had lot of holes in it. Even though his telescope was not perfect, but it was a major achievement. The telescope provided only one quarter of view at a time and the complete view cannot be achieved at a time. The field of view was very narrow.

With the passage of time, the technology advanced and some modifications were made in the telescope. It was on 7^th January, 1960 he saw Jupiter and 3 stars near it. These three stars were aligned in a line with one heading in west direction and other two heading in east direction. Next day he saw all the three stars heading west and still aligned together. This was the start of a new journey. Following this, he discovered various things including sun spots on its surface, Saturn rings which he came across as bumps. He also saw the growth of Venus and its transformation from crescent to disk. All his discoveries were compiled in a book “the Starry Messenger” and were published in 1610. Galileo was successful in his endeavor because he did so following a pattern and was very methodical. It was not that he was the first person to look at moo with a telescope but his approach was very good that accounts for his success.

Cited: http://www.universetoday.com/15763/galileos-telescope/