Everything about History Of Telescopes totally explained
Simple
lenses made from
rock crystal have been known from before recorded history, and various descriptions exist of early experiments in
optics. The effects of
pinhole and
concave lenses were described by
Arabian astronomer,
Ibn al-Haytham, around 1020. Experiments by
Leonard Digges and others in the
16th century preceded the development of the first widely exploited telescopes, when
Dutch-made telescopes, following
Hans Lippershey's design of a convex main lens and a concave
eyepiece, became available in
Europe in 1608.
Galileo greatly improved upon this design the following year. In 1611,
Johannes Kepler described how a telescope could be made with two convex lenses. By 1655
Christiaan Huygens was building powerful and unwieldy Keplerian telescopes with compound eyepieces to study the
planets.
Niccolò Zucchi constructed a
reflecting telescope in 1616, but it was relatively impractical.
Isaac Newton designed a reflector c. 1668 with a small flat diagonal mirror to reflect the light to an eyepiece mounted on the side of the telescope.
Laurent Cassegrain in the same year described the design of a reflector with a small convex secondary mirror, to reflect light through a central hole in the main mirror. It wasn't until 1721, when
John Hadley was able to produce much larger
paraboloidal mirrors, that
Newtonian reflectors began to proliferate. And it was much later that anyone made
Cassegrain reflectors. Cassegrain's and Newton's are still among the most commonly used types of reflecting telescopes today.
The doublet
achromatic lens used in most modern refracting telescopes, first appeared in a 1733 telescope made by
Chester Moore Hall, who didn't publicize it.
John Dollond independently developed achromatic lenses, and produced telescopes using them in commercial quantities starting in 1758.
The
20th century saw the construction of giant telescopes, with many types of telescopes being developed for a wide range of wavelengths from
radio to
gamma-rays. The first
radio telescope went into operation in 1937. Since then a tremendous variety of complex astronomical instruments have been developed.
Early developments
The earliest lenses were not made from glass, but carved and ground from
rock crystal (quartz). It is generally difficult to determine whether artifacts found by archaeologists are jewellery or deliberate attempts at producing lenses. The recorded use of lenses appears in Greek and Roman sources (see
Lens (optics)).
Observation tubes without lenses (
dioptra) were used by the
ancient Greeks. Such devices are also described by the
Islamic astronomers
Albatenius and
al-Biruni.
The beginnings of
telescopic astronomy can be traced back to the
Iraqi
astronomer Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in the
West), the "father of
optics", in the 11th century. His work was influential in the development of the modern telescope. The effects of
pinhole and
concave lenses were written about in his
Book of Optics circa 1020 CE.
Archaeologists have discovered precisely lathe-turned and polished quartz lenses at
Visby on the island of
Gotland in
Sweden. The
Visby lenses can be dated to the second half of the
11th century. These lenses have one strongly curved surface that's nearly a perfect
ellipsoid, and the other side is convex but flatter. Most of the ten finished lenses are unmounted, but some have a silver mounting and might have been worn around the neck as pendants. The strong convexity of these examples seems to suit them more for use as loupes than as telescope objectives, but their aspheric shape gives surprisingly good images for lenses of such high curvature.
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From approximately the 11th century in Europe, '
reading stones' - magnifying lenses placed on the reading material - are well documented, as well as the use of lenses as
burning glasses.
Robert Grosseteste wrote several scientific treatises between
1230 and
1235 including
De Iride (Concerning the Rainbow) in which he said:
This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances...
Roger Bacon was a pupil of Grosseteste at Oxford, and is frequently stated as having described a telescope in the
13th century, however it isn't certain if he built a working model.
It is generally considered that in Europe
spectacles for correcting
long sightedness with convex lenses were invented in Northern Italy in the late 13th to early 14th century. It is possible they'd been invented and were in use in China before this period, but the knowledge hadn't spread, and the invention in Italy was independent. The invention of the use of concave lenses to correct
near-sightedness is ascribed to
Nicholas of Cusa in 1451.
Thus, from the middle of the 15th century onwards, the availability of lenses for spectacles means that it was possible for many individuals to discover the principles of a telescope using one concave and one convex lens, but there's little clear documentation and no physical evidence found of such a discovery.
There is some documentary evidence, but no physical evidence, that the principles of telescopes were known in
England in the late 16th century. Writings by
John Dee and
Thomas Digges in 1570 and 1571 respectively ascribe the use of both reflecting and refracting telescopes to Thomas' father,
Leonard Digges. This is independently confirmed by a report by
William Bourne in approximately 1580. In
Italy,
Giambattista della Porta described a possible telescope in his
Natural Magic published in 1589. These early attempts at constructing telescopes may have been crude, since we hear so little about them. It wasn't until the early 17th century in the
Netherlands that the knowledge of construction and use of telescopes became widespread.
Refracting telescopes
The practical exploitation of the instrument was certainly achieved in the
Netherlands about
1608, but the credit of the original invention has been claimed on behalf of three individuals,
Hans Lippershey and
Zacharias Janssen, spectacle-makers in
Middelburg, and
Jacob Metius of
Alkmaar, also known as Jacob Adriaanszoon.
The original Dutch telescopes were composed of a
convex and a
concave lens, and telescopes so constructed don't invert the image. Telescopes seem to have been made in the Netherlands in considerable numbers soon after the date of their invention, and rapidly found their way all over
Europe.
Galileo happened to be in
Venice in about the month of May
1609, and there heard of a perspective instrument by means of which distant objects appeared nearer and larger. Galileo states that he solved the problem of the construction of a telescope the first night after his return to
Padua from Venice, and made his first telescope the next day by fitting a convex lens in one extremity of a leaden tube and a concave lens in the other one. A few days afterwards, having succeeded in making a better telescope than the first, he took it to Venice, where he communicated the details of his invention to the public, and presented the instrument itself to the
doge Leonardo Donato, sitting in full council. The
senate, in return, settled him for life in his lectureship at Padua and doubled his salary. Galileo may thus claim to have invented the telescope independently, but not until he'd heard that others had done so.
Galileo devoted his time to improving and perfecting the telescope, and soon succeeded in producing telescopes of greatly increased power. His first telescope magnified three diameters; but he soon made instruments which magnified eight diameters, and finally one that magnified thirty-three diameters. With this last instrument he discovered in
1610 the
satellites of
Jupiter, and soon afterwards the
spots on the sun, the phases of
Venus, and the hills and valleys on the
Moon. He demonstrated the revolution of the satellites of Jupiter around the planet, and gave rough predictions of their configurations, proved the rotation of the
Sun on its axis, established the general truth of the
Copernican system as compared with that of
Ptolemy, and fairly routed the fanciful
dogmas of the
philosophers.
These brilliant achievements, together with Galileo's immense improvement of the instrument, overshadowed to a great degree the credit due to the original inventor, and led to the universal adoption of the name of the
Galilean telescope for the form of the instrument invented by Lippershey.
Johannes Kepler first explained the theory and some of the practical advantages of a telescope constructed of two convex lenses in his
Catoptrics (
1611). The first person who actually constructed a telescope of this form was the
Jesuit Christoph Scheiner, who gives a description of it in his
Rosa Ursina (
1630).
William Gascoigne was the first who practically appreciated a chief advantage of the form of telescope suggested by Kepler, viz., the visibility of the image of a distant object simultaneously with that of a small material object placed in the common focus of the two lenses. This led to his invention of the
micrometer and his application of telescopic sights to precision astronomical instruments. But it wasn't till about the middle of the
17th century that Kepler's telescope came into general use, and then, not so much because of the advantages pointed out by Gascoigne, but because its
field of view was much larger than in the
Galilean telescope.
The first powerful telescopes of Keplerian construction were made by
Christiaan Huygens, after much labour, in which he was assisted by his brother. With one of these, of 12 ft (3.7 m) focal length, he discovered the brightest of Saturn's satellites (
Titan) in
1655, and in
1659 he published his
Systema Saturnium, in which was given for the first time a true explanation of Saturn's
ring, founded on observations made with the same instrument.
The
sharpness of the image in Kepler's telescope was very inferior to that of the Galilean instrument. When high magnifying powers were required, it became essential to increase the focal length, since longer focal lengths resulted in less trouble with
chromatic aberration.
Giovanni Cassini discovered
Saturn's fifth satellite (
Rhea) In
1672 with a telescope of 35 ft (10.7 m), and the third and fourth satellites in
1684 with telescopes made by
Campani of 100 and 136 ft (30.5 and 41.5 m) focal length.
Christian Huygens states that he and his brother made object-glasses of 170 and 210 ft (52 and 64 m) focal length, and he presented one of 123 ft (37.5 m) to the
Royal Society of London.
Adrien Auzout (died in
1691) and others are said to have made telescopes of from 300 to 600 ft (90 to 180 m) focal length, but it doesn't appear that they were ever able to use them in practical observations.
James Bradley, on
December 27,
1722, actually measured the diameter of
Venus with a telescope whose object glass had a focal length of 212 ft (65 m).
In these very long telescopes no tube was employed, and they were consequently termed
aerial telescopes. Huygens contrived some ingenious arrangements for directing such telescopes towards any object visible in the heavens - the focal adjustment and centring of the
eyepiece being preserved by a braced rod connecting the object glass and eyepiece. Other contrivances for the same purpose are described by
Philippe de la Hire and by
Nicolaus Hartsoeker. Telescopes of such great length were naturally difficult to use, and must have taxed to the utmost the skill and patience of the observers.
Reflecting telescopes
Until
Isaac Newton's discovery of the varying refraction of light of different
colours, it was generally supposed that lenses of telescopes were subject to no other errors than those which arose from the spherical figure of their surfaces, and the efforts of opticians were chiefly directed to the construction of lenses of other forms of curvature.
Leonard Digges, an English surveyor, is recorded by
William Bourne as having constructed and used a reflecting telescope in the 16th century.
Niccolò Zucchi, an Italian Jesuit astronomer and physicist is regarded as having produced a reflecting telescope in
1616 and using it in
1630 to discover the belts of
Jupiter. Zucchi wrote a treatise between
1652 and
1656 entitled
Optica philosophia experimentalis et ratione a fundamentis constituta which may have inspired the later work by
James Gregory and
Isaac Newton.
James Gregory, in his
Optica Promota (
1663), discussed the forms of images and objects produced by lenses and mirrors, and showed that when the surfaces of the lenses or mirrors are portions of spheres, the images are curves concave towards the objective, but if the curves of the surfaces are
conic sections, the
spherical aberration is corrected. He was well aware of the failures of all attempts to perfect telescopes by employing lenses of various forms of curvature, and accordingly proposed the form of reflecting telescope which bears his name: the
Gregorian telescope. But Gregory, according to his own confession, had no practical skill; he could find no optician capable of realizing his ideas, and after some fruitless attempts was obliged to abandon all hope of bringing his telescope into practical use.
When in
1666 Isaac Newton made his discovery of the varying refraction of light of different colours, he soon perceived that the faults of the refracting telescope were due much more to this cause than to the spherical figure of the lenses. He over-hastily concluded from some rough experiments that all refracting substances diverged the prismatic colours in a constant proportion to their mean refraction; and he drew the natural conclusion that refraction couldn't be produced without colour, and therefore that no improvement could be expected from the refracting telescope. But, having ascertained by experiment that for all colours of light the
angle of incidence is equal to the
angle of reflection, he turned his attention to the construction of reflecting telescopes. After much experiment he selected an
alloy (
speculum metal) of
tin and
copper as the most suitable material for his specula, and he devised means for grinding and polishing them. He didn't attempt the formation of a parabolic figure on account of the probable mechanical difficulties, and he'd besides satisfied himself that the chromatic and not the spherical aberration formed the chief faults of previous telescopes. Newton's first telescope so far realized his expectations that he could see with its aid the
satellites of
Jupiter and the horns of Venus. Encouraged by this success, he made a second telescope, with a magnifying power of 38 diameters, which he presented to the
Royal Society of London in December
1672. This type of telescope is still called a
Newtonian telescope.
A third form of reflecting telescope, the
Cassegrain reflector, was devised in
1672 by
Laurent Cassegrain. The telescope had a small convex
hyperboloidal secondary mirror placed near the prime focus to reflect light through a central hole in the main mirror.
No further practical advance appears to have been made in the design or construction of the instrument till the year
1721, when
John Hadley (best known as the inventor of the
octant) presented to the Royal Society a reflecting telescope of the Newtonian construction, with a metallic speculum of 6 inch (15 cm) aperture and 62 3/4 inch (159 cm) focal length, having eyepieces magnifying up to 230 diameters. The instrument was examined by
Pound and
Bradley. After remarking that Newton's telescope had lain neglected for fifty years, they stated that Hadley had sufficiently shown that the invention didn't consist in bare theory. They compared its performance with that of the object-glass of 123 ft focal length presented to the Royal Society by Huygens, and found that Hadley's reflector "will bear such a charge as to make it magnify the object as many times as the latter with its due charge," and that it represents objects as distinct, though not altogether so clear and bright.
Bradley and
Samuel Molyneux, having been instructed by Hadley in his methods of polishing specula, succeeded in producing some telescopes of considerable power, one of which had a focal length of 8 ft (2.4 m); and, Molyneux having communicated these methods to Scarlet and Hearn, two London opticians, the manufacture of telescopes as a matter of business was begun by them.
But it was reserved for
James Short of
Edinburgh to give practical effect to Gregory's original idea. Born at Edinburgh in
1710 and originally educated for the church, Short attracted the attention of
Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics at the university, who permitted him about
1732 to make use of his rooms in the college buildings for experiments in the construction of telescopes. In Short's first telescopes the specula were of glass, as suggested by Gregory, but he afterwards used metallic specula only, and succeeded in giving to them true
parabolic and
elliptic figures. Short then adopted telescope-making as his profession, which he practised first in Edinburgh and afterwards in London. All Short's telescopes were of the Gregorian form. Short died in London in
1768, having made a considerable fortune by the exercise of his profession.
About the year
1774 William Herschel, then a teacher of
music in
Bath, began to occupy his leisure hours with the construction of specula, and finally devoted himself entirely to their construction and use. In
1778 he selected a 6 1/4 inch (16 cm) speculum, the best of some 400 specula which he'd made, and with it built his celebrated 7 foot (2.1 m) focal length telescope. Using this telescope, he made his early brilliant astronomical discoveries.
In
1783 Herschel completed a reflector of approximately 18 inches (46 cm) aperture and 20 ft (6 m) focal length. He observed the heavens with this telescope for some twenty years, replacing the speculum several times. In
1789 he built a giant reflector of 49 inches (124 cm) aperture and 40 ft (12 m) focal length, with which he made additional discoveries. This telescope suffered from problems of scale that were not altogether solved in Herschel's century, and thus it never was as satisfactory as the 20 foot telescope.
But the reflecting telescope became the only available tool of the astronomer when great light grasp was needed.
Achromatic refracting telescopes
The first person who succeeded in making achromatic refracting telescopes was
Chester Moore Hall from
Essex, England. He argued that the different humours of the human eye so refract rays of light as to produce an image on the
retina which is free from colour, and he reasonably argued that it might be possible to produce a like result by combining lenses composed of different refracting media. After devoting some time to the inquiry he found that, by combining two lenses formed of different kinds of glass, he could make an "
achromatic lens" where the effects of the unequal refractions of light was corrected. In
1733 he succeeded in constructing telescope lenses which exhibited much reduced chromatic aberration. One of these instruments of only 20 inches (51 cm) focal length had an aperture of 2 1/2 inches (6.4 cm).
Hall was a man of independent means, and seems to have been careless of fame; at least he took no trouble to communicate his invention to the world. At a trial in Westminster Hall about the patent rights granted to
John Dollond (Watkin v. Dollond), Hall was admitted to be the first inventor of the achromatic telescope; but it was ruled by
Lord Mansfield that it wasn't the original inventor who ought to profit from such invention, but he who brought it forth for the benefit of humankind.
In
1747 Leonhard Euler sent to the
Berlin Academy of Sciences a paper in which he tried to prove the possibility of correcting both the chromatic and the spherical aberration of a lens. Like Gregory and Hall, he argued that, since the various humours of the human eye were so combined as to produce a perfect image, it should be possible by suitable combinations of lenses of different refracting media to construct a perfect object-glass. Adopting a hypothetical law of the dispersion of differently coloured rays of light, he proved analytically the possibility of constructing an achromatic object-glass composed of lenses of glass and water.
But all of Euler's efforts to produce an actual object-glass of this construction were fruitless - a failure which he attributed solely to the difficulty of procuring lenses worked precisely to the requisite curves.
John Dollond agreed with the accuracy of Euler's analysis, but disputed his hypothesis on the grounds that it was purely a theoretical assumption, that the theory was opposed to the results of Newton's experiments on the refraction of light, and that it was impossible to determine a
physical law from analytical reasoning alone.
In
1754 Euler sent to the Berlin Academy a further paper, in which, starting from the hypothesis that light consists of vibrations excited in an elastic fluid by luminous bodies, and that the difference of colour of light is due to the greater or less frequency of these vibrations in a given time, he deduced his previous results. He didn't doubt the accuracy of Newton's experiments quoted by Dollond.
Dollond didn't reply to this, but soon afterwards he received an abstract of a paper by
Samuel Klingenstierna, the
Swedish mathematician and astronomer, which led him to doubt the accuracy of the results deduced by Newton on the dispersion of refracted light. Klingenstierna showed from purely geometrical considerations, fully appreciated by Dollond, that the results of Newton's experiments couldn't be brought into harmony with other universally accepted facts of refraction.
A practical man, Dollond at once put his doubts to the test of experiment, confirmed the conclusions of Klingenstierna, discovered a difference far beyond his hopes in the refractive qualities of different kinds of glass with respect to the divergence of colours, and was thus rapidly led to the construction of lenses in which first the chromatic and afterwards the spherical aberration were corrected.
Dollond was aware of the conditions necessary for the attainment of achromatism in refracting telescopes, but long placed implicit reliance on the accuracy of experiments made by so illustrious a philosopher as Newton. His writings show that but for this confidence he'd have arrived sooner at a discovery for which his mind was fully prepared. Dollond's paper recounts the successive steps by which he arrived at his discovery independently of Hall's earlier invention, and the logical processes by which these steps were suggested to his mind.
The triple object-glass, consisting of a combination of two convex lenses of crown glass with a concave flint lens between them, was introduced in
1765 by Peter Dollond, son of John Dollond, and he made many telescopes of this kind.
The difficulty of procuring disks of glass (especially of flint glass) of suitable purity and homogeneity limited the diameter and light gathering power of achromatic telescope lenses. It was in vain that the
French Academy of Sciences offered prizes for large perfect disks of optical flint glass. Not until 1866 did refracting telescopes reach 18 inches (45 cm) aperture.
Giant telescopes
The first giant telescope can be said to be
William Herschel's great reflector with a mirror of 49 inches (124 cm) built in
1789. This was followed in
1845 by
Lord Rosse's 72 inch (183 cm) reflector with which he discovered the spiral form of the
galaxies. The late
19th century also saw a boom in the construction of large refracting telescopes, of which the largest was the
Yerkes Observatory's 40 inch (101.6 cm) refractor. The
20th century saw the construction of many giant reflecting telescopes. Beginning with the completion of the 100 inch (254 cm) reflector at the
Mount Wilson Observatory in
1917, it was followed in
1948 by the completion of the 200 inch (508 cm)
Hale reflector at
Mount Palomar, which was the largest telescope in the world until the completion of the 605 cm (238 in)
Large Altazimuth Telescope in
Russia in
1975. The
1990's saw a new generation of giant telescopes appear, beginning with the construction of the first of the two 10 m (394 in)
Keck telescopes in
1993. Other giant telescopes built since then include the two
Gemini telescopes, the four separate telescopes of the
Very Large Telescope, and the
Large Binocular Telescope.
Other wavelengths
The
twentieth century saw the construction of telescopes which could image wavelengths other than
visible light. The first radio telescope was built by
Grote Reber in 1937, and this prompted a new era of observational astronomy after
World War II, with telescopes being developed for other parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum from
radio to
gamma-rays.
Gamma-ray telescopes
Gamma rays are absorbed high in the
Earth's atmosphere, so most gamma-ray astronomy is conducted with
satellites. Gamma-ray telescopes used
scintillation counters,
spark chambers and, more recently,
solid-state detectors. The angular resolution of these devices is typically very poor. There were
balloon-borne experiments in the early 1960's, but gamma-ray astronomy really began with the launch of the
OSO 3 satellite in 1967. The first dedicated gamma-ray satellites were
SAS B (1972) and
Cos B (1975). The
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991) was a big improvement on previous surveys. Very high-energy gamma-rays (above 200 GeV) can be detected from the ground via the
Cerenkov radiation produced by the passage of the gamma-rays in the Earth's atmosphere. Several Cerenkov imaging telescopes have been built around the world including
HEGRA (1987),
STACEE (2001),
HESS (2003), and
MAGIC (2004).
X-ray telescopes
X-rays from space don't reach the Earth's surface, so X-ray astronomy has to be conducted above the Earth's atmosphere. The first X-ray experiments were conducted on
sub-orbital rocket flights, which enabled the first detection of X-rays from the
Sun (1948) and the first galactic X-ray sources:
Scorpius X-1 (June 1962) and the
Crab Nebula (October 1962). Since then, X-ray telescopes have been built using nested grazing-incidence mirrors, which deflect X-rays to a detector. Some of the
OAO satellites conducted X-ray astronomy in the late 1960's, but the first dedicated X-ray satellite was
Uhuru (1970) which discovered 300 sources. More recent X-ray satellites include
EXOSAT (1983),
ROSAT (1990),
Chandra (1999), and
Newton (1999).
Ultra-violet telescopes
Although optical telescopes can image the near ultraviolet, the
ozone layer in the
stratosphere absorbs
ultraviolet radiation shorter than 300 nm, so most ultra-violet astronomy is conducted with satellites. Ultraviolet telescopes resemble optical telescopes, but conventional
aluminium-coated mirrors can't be used and alternatives coatings such as
magnesium fluoride or
lithium fluoride are used instead. The
OSO 1 satellite carried out observations in the ultra-violet as early as 1962. The
International Ultraviolet Explorer (1978) systematically surveyed the sky for eighteen years, it carried a 45 cm (18 in) aperture telescope with two
spectroscopes. Extreme-ultraviolet astronomy (10-100 nm) is a discipline in its own right, and involves many of the techniques of X-ray astronomy, the
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (1992) was a satellite which operated at these wavelengths.
Infra-red telescopes
Although most
infrared radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, infrared astronomy at certain wavelengths can be conducted on high mountains where there's little absorption by atmospheric
water vapor. Ever since suitable detectors became available, most optical telescopes at high-altitudes have been able to image at infrared wavelengths. Some telescopes such as the 3.8 m (150 in)
UKIRT, and the 3 m (118 in)
IRTF, both on
Mauna Kea, are dedicated infrared telescopes. The launch of the
IRAS satellite in 1983 revolutionized infrared astronomy from space. This reflecting telescope which had a 60 cm (23 in) mirror, operated for nine months until its supply of coolant (
liquid helium) ran out. It surveyed the entire sky detecting 245 000 infrared sources, more than 100 times the number previously known.
Radio telescopes
Radio astronomy began in 1931 when
Karl Jansky discovered that the
Milky Way was a source of
radio emission. The first radio telescope, a 31.4 ft (9.6 m) dish, was built by
Grote Reber in 1937, with which he discovered various unexplained radio sources in the sky. Interest in radio astronomy grew after the
Second World War, when much larger dishes were built including the 250 ft (76 m)
Jodrell bank telescope (1957), the 300 ft (91 m)
Green Bank Telescope (1962), and the 100 m (328 ft)
Effelsberg telescope (1971). The huge 1000 ft (305 m)
Arecibo telescope (1963) is so large that it's fixed into a natural depression in the ground, the central antenna can be steered to allow the telescope to study objects up to twenty degrees from the
zenith. Not every radio telescope is of the dish type, the
Mills Cross Telescope (1954) was an early example of an array which used two perpendicular lines of antennae 1500 ft (457 m) in length to survey the sky.
High-energy radio-waves are known as
microwaves and this has been an important area of astronomy ever since the discovery of the
cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964. Many ground-based
radio telescopes can study microwaves. Short wavelength microwaves are best studied from space, because water-vapor, even at high altitudes, strongly weakens the signal. The
Cosmic Background Explorer (1989) revolutionized the study of the microwave background radiation.
Because radio telescopes have low resolution, they were the first instruments to use
interferometry, allowing two or more, widely separated, instruments to simultaneously observe the same source.
Very long baseline interferometry extended the technique over thousands of
kilometers and allowed resolutions down to a few milli-
arcseconds.
Interferometric telescopes
In
1868 Fizeau noted that the purpose of the arrangement of mirrors or glass lenses in a conventional telescope was simply to provide an approximation to a
Fourier transform of the optical wave field entering the telescope. As this mathematical transform was well understood and could be performed mathematically on paper, he noted that using an array of small instruments it would be possible to measure the diameter of a star with the same precision as a single telescope which was as large as the whole array, a technique which later became known as
astronomical interferometry. It wasn't until
1891 that
Michelson successfully used this technique for the measurement of astronomical angular diameters, those of Jupiter's satellites (Michelson 1891). Finally, 30 years later, a direct interferometric measurement of a stellar diameter was realized by Michelson &
Pease (1921) with their 20 ft (6.1 m) interferometer mounted on the
100 inch Hooker Telescope on Mount Wilson.
The next major development came in
1946 when
Ryle and Vonberg (Ryle and Vonberg 1946) constructed a radio analogue of the
Michelson interferometer and soon located a number of new cosmic radio sources. The signals from two radio antennas were added electronically to produce interference. Ryle and Vonberg's telescope used the rotation of the Earth to scan the sky in one dimension. With the development of larger arrays, and of computers which could rapidly perform the necessary Fourier transforms, the first
aperture synthesis imaging instruments were soon developed, which could obtain high resolution images without the need of a giant parabolic reflector to perform the Fourier transform. This technique is now used in most radio astronomy observations. Radio astronomers soon developed the
mathematical methods to perform
aperture synthesis Fourier imaging using much larger arrays of telescopes, often spread across more than one continent. In the 1980s the
aperture synthesis technique was extended to visible light and infrared astronomy providing the first very high resolution optical and infrared images of nearby stars.
In
1995 this imaging technique was demonstrated on
an array of separate optical telescopes for the first time, allowing a further improvement in resolution, and allowing even higher resolution
imaging of stellar surfaces. The same techniques have now been applied at a number of other astronomical telescope arrays, including the
Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer, the
CHARA array and the
IOTA array. A detailed description of the development of astronomical optical interferometry can be found
here.
Further Information
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