Galileo's Telescope Facts: Astronomy Details Revealed For Kids

Telescopes are optical instruments that use many lenses to magnify objects that are too small to see with the naked eye.

There are a variety of lens combinations that may be used to magnify distant things. But Galileo's observations about the telescopes are the simplest.

In July 1610, Galileo Galilei used his telescope for the first time to see Saturn. He had previously reported the discovery of Jupiter's moons, but Saturn, the furthest planet known at the time and twice as far away as planet Jupiter, was even more enigmatic and difficult to comprehend.

Galileo's telescope could now magnify normal eyesight by 10 times, but it had a relatively limited field of view. Galileo went blind at the age of 74, but not because he peered through his telescope at the Sun. He always drew a picture of the Sun on a flat surface.

Thanks to Galileo's observations, we can study things in the cosmos by detecting the heat, radio waves, or X-rays they release. Planets orbiting other stars are now being discovered using telescopes.

If you like this article, you may find it interesting to read our other fun facts articles about Galileo spacecraft facts and Constantine facts here at Kidadl.

The Invention Of Galileo's Telescope

Galileo developed his first telescope in 1609, based on three-fold magnifying telescopes made elsewhere in Europe. The telescope maker processes the lens in three steps: cutting, grinding, and polishing. Jacob Metius was a lens grinder and instrument manufacturer from the Netherlands. 

In 1608, Hans Lippershey, a spectacle manufacturer, filed to the Dutch government for a patent for a contraption that allowed him to see at a distance. His application was denied, and the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) became aware of the gadget as a consequence of the publicity.

Galileo improved early telescopes to make equipment with higher magnification, and he made the first recorded astronomical observations using telescopes in 1609.

Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist, used a telescope he built to make observations of the stars in 1610. And what he witnessed would forever change modern astronomy and our view of the universe.

Galileo's telescope has some historical precedents, of course. In the late summer of 1608, a new innovation called the spyglass was all the rage in Europe. Almost all skilled opticians could probably make these low-power telescopes, but the first was claimed by Lippershey of Holland. The vision was only enlarged a few times with these crude telescopes.

Features Of Galileo's Telescope

Galileo's telescope worked in the same way as opera glasses do: it was a simple arrangement of glass lenses that magnified objects.

Galileo's telescope progressed considerably from its early models, which only enhanced the vision to the eighth power. Within a few years, Galileo began grinding his own lenses and altering his arrays. Galileo's telescopes could now magnify normal eyesight by ten times, but they had a relatively limited field of view.

The primary instrument of Galileo was a primitive refracting telescope. His first version only magnified 8x, but it was quickly developed to the 20x magnification he employed for his Sidereus nuncius observations.

It had a long tube with a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. His telescopes' biggest flaw was their extremely narrow field of vision, which was often roughly half the diameter of the Moon.

The Invention Made By Galileo's Telescope

Galileo's first telescopic observations were to examine the solar system and the Moon, identify Jupiter's four satellites, witness a supernova, verify Earth and Venus' phases, and discovered sunspots. His discoveries are supported by the Copernican theory, which states that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun.

Galileo made shocking observations when he focused his telescope toward Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. When Galileo sighted four moons orbiting Jupiter, his observations were evidence to corroborate Copernicus' heliocentric hypothesis.

Galileo was the first to use a telescope to look up into the sky and at the moon. He saw mountains and fractures on the moon, and a ribbon of diffuse light arching over the night sky that Galileo named the 'Milky Way'.

In addition, he found Saturn's rings, the sun, and four of Jupiter's moons. Thomas Harriot is credited with being the first person to use a telescope to observe sunspots in 1610.

Galileo began examining the celestial bodies with devices magnified up to 20 times in the fall of 1609. Galileo first observed the Galilean moons in December 1609.

He drew the phases of the moons of Jupiter as viewed via a telescope in December, demonstrating that the Moon's surface is rough as well as uneven, rather than smooth as previously assumed. He detected four moons circling around Jupiter in the month of January in 1610.

He also discovered that the telescope revealed far more stars than the human eye could see.

These discoveries were so revolutionary that Galileo wrote a small book known as Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger, to discuss them. He dubbed the moons of Jupiter the Sidera Medicea, or 'Medicean Stars,' after Cosimo II de Medici (1590–1621), the grand duke of his home country, Tuscany, to whom he had taught mathematics for many summers.

He pointed his new 30 power telescope at Jupiter on January 7, 1610, and discovered three stars that are tiny and brilliant near the planet.

The sight of bumps close to the planet Saturn (the borders of Saturn's rings), patches on the Sun's surface (called Sunspots), and watching Venus shift from a complete disc to a thin crescent awaited Galileo's telescope.

He looked at how the Moon was lit and how it changed over time, correctly determining that it was caused by shadows cast by lunar mountains and craters. When Galileo observed from Earth, dim stars in the Milky Way appeared to be clouded because they were so close together.

On the other hand, the phases of Venus were the discovery that had the most influence on his life.

Venus, like the Moon, passes through a full cycle of phases that are similar when viewed from Earth. However, due to Venus's small size, they can only be seen using a telescope, and Galileo was the first to see them.

On the other hand, the phases of Venus witnessed by Galileo can only be explained by Venus circling the Sun. As a result, Galileo came to the conclusion that the geocentric hypothesis was false.

Type Of Telescope Made By Galileo

Galileo's refracting telescopes ('refractors'), like their previous Dutch counterparts, employed lenses to bend, or refract, light. They had a convex lens and a concave eyepiece lens. The telescopes were rather simple to construct.

A Galilean telescope has two convex lenses: a large converging lens with a long focal length (the objective) and a diverging lens with a short focal length (the eyepiece). When used alone, they provide a lesser image of a distant object, but when used together, they generate a magnified image.

When observed by an observer, an object's apparent size is the size it seems to be. The apparent size of larger celestial objects is sometimes measured in degrees. The apparent diameter of the Moon, for example, is about 0.5 degrees. The perceived size is increased by using a telescope.

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