Hubble Telescope

A ground breaking new tool used to study the heavens was introduced in the 17th century. This tool was known as the telescope. It revealed the cosmos in a different way than our naked eye could ever perceive. The telescope opened doors to countless stars, nebulae, galaxies, and a slew of never before seen wonders. With its creation came limitations and caused the need to improve and upgrade the methods in which the telescope functioned and find new ways of viewing the heavens.There are three main types of telescopes; refractor telescope, reflector telescope and compound telescope, also known as catadioptric telescopes. Each of these telescopes has a main function which is its ability to gather light. The telescope also has resolving power, which allows the telescope to reveal details in objects and a magnifying power, which scales the object in size through the telescope. Every telescope has these functions,
A day later the most powerful telescope of its day was ready to be used to peer into the cosmos with beauty and accuracy (Jenner). The Hubble telescope is a Ritchey-Chretien Cassegrain reflector. As light is gathered, it travels through a “tube fitted with baffles” designed to keep out stray light. The light is then reflected off a concave mirror composed of “ultra-low expansion glass” that is constantly kept at room temperature. The mirror was ground to have reflecting surfaces of the precise shape (“Hubble’s Amazing Optics”). The Hubble Space Telescope has a focal length of 189 feet (Elert). In 1993 the Hubble Telescope was surpassed by the Keck Observatory Telescopes located in Mauna Kea, Hawaii (Moseman). The twin telescopes both hold a 33-foot in diameter mirror, each mirror separated into 36 individual segments. The segments on each mirror are computer-driven and are used to account for atmospheric disturbances in real time (“Keck Telescope Science Kit Fact