Evolution of the Telescope
Soon after Galileo first looked at the night sky, he started to create larger and more powerful telescopes. He made his telescopes longer, which increased the magnifying power and reduced the imperfections caused by the glass. Isaac Newton invented the next version of the telescope. Newton created the reflecting telescope, which used a concave mirror to collect light and a lens to direct it to the eye. These telescopes had more magnifying power and could be quite large. Today, the largest reflecting telescopes have mirrors with diameters of 33 feet. Three of the largest telescopes are located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Only one of them actually has an eyepiece. Most of the time, requests for observations are sent electronically and the gathered data is sent back. These telescopes can peer deeper into space, much, much farther than telescopes in Galileo’s day.