![]() Another worthwhile site is The Art of Renaissance Science: Galileo and Perspective.It is also the source for the image of Galileo at the top of this page. It is hosted by Rice University and includes his writings, details on his experiments and observations and links. An excellent online source for all things related to Galileo is: The Galileo Project.More stars are resolved in this drawing by Galileo of the Pleiades than are visible to the unaided eye. This posed the question as to why there were invisible objects in the night sky? On turning his telescope to the band of the Milky Way Galileo saw it resolved into thousands of hitherto unseen stars. This then eased the problem posed by the failure of astronomers to detect stellar parallax that was a consequence of Copernicus' model. Galileo suggested that this was due to their immense distance from Earth. Stars in the Milky WayĮven through a telescope the stars still appeared as points of light. It was not until 1656 that the Dutch scientist, Christiaan Huygens correctly described them as rings. Galileo noted two appendages from the sides of Saturn. Its blemishes and imperfections again undermined the Aristotelian ideal of a perfect cosmos. Galileo, in his Letters on Sunspots supported the sunspot interpretation and used it to show that the Sun was rotating. Debate centered on whether these were satellites of the Sun or actual spots on its surface. SunspotsĪlong with contemporaries such as Thomas Harriot, David Frabicius and Christoph Scheiner, Galileo observed dark regions that appeared to move across the surface of the Sun. Galileo rejected Tycho's model as an unnecessary hybrid and used the discovery to consolidate his support of the Copernican model. This could not be explained in the Ptolemaic model but could be accounted for by either the Sun-centered Copernican model or the Earth-centered Tychonic model that had the other planets orbiting the Sun as it orbited the Earth. Venus was observed to go through a sequence of phases similar to the Moon. Galileo's best refractor was able to magnify an object 30 times.Galileo's drawings of the moons of Jupiter of successive nights The Phases of Venus ![]() The convex lens inside of a refractor is used to spread out the light from the concave lens in order to see a clearer view of a faraway object.Īlthough refractor lens are still used in small telescopes, they are better used in binoculars and gun scopes. The concave lens inside a refractor focuses the light given off by an object into one focus point. There are two lenses inside of a refractor: a concave lens and a convex lens. Refractor telescopes should be no longer than 40 inches in order to be easy to use. In 1733, an achromatic lens was developed that corrected some of the distortion of the normal refractor lens. The farther apart the lenses are inside of refractor, the clearer the image will be.Īt one point, Johannes Hevelius built a refractor that was 158 feet long and was very difficult to use. The refracting telescope that was used by Galileo was less than 2 inches long. Refractors are outdated because their image can sometimes be distorted and blurred.Īlthough refracting telescopes are seemingly outdated, they are the better option for a beginning sky observer. The largest size of any one lens in a refracting telescope is 1 meter. The largest refracting telescope was built in 1897. The largest refracting telescope in the world is in Wisconsin. Basically a refracting telescope uses an eyepiece and a lens to gather more light in order to construct a brighter and clearer picture of an object. During the following year, Galileo improved the refracting telescope and used it to study the sky. These types of telescopes were the first to be used and were developed in 1608. A refracting telescope, or refractor, is one that uses lenses to produce an image.
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