Galileo smartscope 800x90mm about
a converging lens, shown in the top of the diagram above, causes parallel light rays from a distant object, shown in red, to bend so that they converge at point known as its focus.Telescopes of this design are called Galilean telescopes and to understand how they work it is necessary to understand a little about lenses. There are various combinations of lenses which can be used to magnify distant objects, but the simplest is the one used by Galileo. Galileo Galilei – image from Wikimedia Commons
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Indeed, the first use of the word telescope, which is constructed from the Greek words ‘tele’ meaning ‘far’ and ‘skopos’ meaning ‘seeing’, is associated with Galileo’s instrument. Galileo refined the early telescopes to produce instruments with better magnification and in 1609 he took the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope. His application was refused and, in the resulting publicity, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) became aware of the device.
In 1608 a spectacle maker called Hans Lippershey applied to the Dutch government for a patent for a device for seeing at a distance. It is unclear who invented the first telescope: lenses had been widely used in Europe to correct poor eyesight since the fourteenth century and I expect that, over time, the telescope was actually invented many times by different individuals, who discovered that combining different lenses could produce a magnified image.
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Telescopes are instruments which use multiple lenses to produce magnified images of distant objects.