The History of Telescopes

In 1608, an eyeglass maker had an idea. He picked up two eyeglass lenses and held one in front of the other. He wanted to see what would happen when he looked through them together. To his surprise, they made things look bigger! They magnified things.

He put the lenses on each end of a long tube. He looked through the tube to magnify things. That was the first telescope.

The next year, a scientist named Galileo Galilei (ga-luh-LAY-ee) built his own telescope. He used it to look at space. He saw that our moon has hills and valleys, just like Earth. He also saw four of the planet Jupiter’s many moons!

Telescopes kept getting better. They also got much bigger. Some were longer than a school bus!

In 1917, scientists finished building a huge telescope called the Hooker telescope. It let us see beyond our own galaxy for the first time. A galaxy is a group of billions of stars and planets.

The Hooker telescope taught us how vast the universe is. It’s huge!

In 1968, scientists built a really big telescope . . . and sent it into space with a rocket! It could take pictures of the stars.

Today there are many telescopes in space. They send images back to us. They show us pictures of faraway galaxies. They show us new planets. They show us exploding stars! What will telescopes help us discover next?