Telescopes..!!

It has been theorized that the Pillars of Creation, made famous by the Hubble Telescope, may no longer exist. They may have been destroyed by a supernova shockwave around 6000 years ago, but the light from this hasn’t reached Earth so we won’t see it for another 1000 years.

Pope Paul VI spent the night of July 20,21 1969 watching the moon through a telescope of the Vatican Observatory during the first moon landing. Afterward, he praised the achievement by writing at length about the event. 

Einstein and his wife once visited the enormous Mount Wilson Observatory with astronomer Edwin Hubble. When told that Hubble’s telescopes were revealing the ultimate shape of the universe, Einstein’s wife nonchalantly responded, “Well, my husband does that on the back of an old envelope.”

A Minister from Australia has visually discovered more supernovae than any person on Earth. Through mostly small backyard telescopes he has memorized the starfield foreground and position of 1500 galaxies. 

Astronomer Percival Lowell believed that he was the first person to observe canals on Venus, but because of a faulty adjustment of the eyepiece of his telescope, he was, in fact, looking at the blood vessels in his own eye. 

There is a mysterious dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter called ‘Ceres’ which has never been visited by spacecraft or photographed in detail, however, Earth-bound telescopes reveal a large bright shining spot on the surface of this planet, the origin and nature of which are unknown. 

The JWST telescope is launching in 2018, it is 100X more powerful than Hubble, and will be able to see the edge of the observable universe.

Jack Black’s mother was one of the engineers who helped design the Hubble Space Telescope. 

There exists an image of Columbia space shuttle reentering atmosphere just before it disintegrated. It was snapped casually by people in Kirtland Air Force Base testing their tracking telescope.You can see debris stream out from the left wing.

NASA and the German Aerospace Center shoved a big ass telescope inside a 747 so it could work above the clouds. 

Canada nicknamed their first space telescope the “Humble Space Telescope”. 

Two former U.S. astronauts started an organization, independent from NASA, dedicated to launching a telescope called “The Sentinel” that will orbit the Sun and detect any Earth-bound asteroid threats up to decades in advance.

China has a telescope on the moon.

Instead of the traditional gifts of a watch and pair of long pants, rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun’s mother gave him a telescope for his Lutheran confirmation, sparking his passion for astronomy.

Europe is building a telescope that will produce images 15 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope, possibly enabling it to observe Earth-like exoplanets. First light is planned for 2024.

Astronomers polished a 25-meter mirror for the Great Magellan Telescope so smooth that the largest bump is .0003 times the width of a human hair.

Ball, the maker of the glass mason jars, is making the mirrors for the James Webb telescope and made the optics for Hubble.Also, they are one of the biggest defense contractors.

The James Webb Telescope is so sensitive that it can detect heat generated by a bumblebee as far away as the Moon.

On January 7th, 1610 Galileo Galilei improved the telescope’s design and used it to study Jupiter. He discovered 4 of Jupiter’s moons and helped disprove the Ptolemaic world system(Earth-centric universe) theory.

Vatican state owns an observatory telescope in south-west Arizona.

Neptune was the first planet to get its existence predicted by calculations before it was actually seen by a telescope.

The hottest place in the universe is a cluster of galaxies called RXJ1347; it was discovered in 2009 by the Japanese telescope Suzaku and has a constant temperature of 300 million Celsius degrees.

The military found two Hubble-class space telescopes they had basically forgotten about and had in storage. They donated them to NASA minus some undisclosed advanced attachments. They were more advanced that Hubble and had never been used.

NASA plans to build a Radio Telescope on the far side of the Moon by the 2030s.

There’s a telescope facility in Chile called the Very Large Telescope. It is very large.

A new radio telescope being built in Australia and South Africa will generate so much data about space that it will exceed global internet traffic by a large margin. An exabyte per day of raw data, which could be compressed to around 10 petabytes.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank was subtly turned towards the Soviet Union as it was the only telescope in the world capable of providing early warning of an impending strike.

In 2009 a space enthusiast with a ten-inch consumer level telescope took photos of the ISS as it passed overhead. An astronaut in a spacesuit working on the station is discernable in the shot.

There is a town in West Virginia where, due to the presence of a high-tech government telescope, all phones and WiFi are illegal.

The initial launch of the Hubble Space Telescope was seen as a complete failure due to faulty optics and other instruments. This billion dollar mistake threatened to mark the end of NASA. It wasn’t until 3 years later that STS-61 was able to repair it thus saving the space agency.

Liquid Mirror Telescopes use a highly reflective liquid like mercury that is rotated so that the centrifugal force creates a near perfect parabola. It is super cheap in comparison to traditional mirrors and Large Zenith Telescope is the largest in the world with 30 liters of mercury. 

In the 1600s French astronomer, Adrien Auzout once considered building a telescope 1,000 ft long. He thought the magnification would allow him to see animals on the moon.

Galileo was the first person to see Saturn’s rings but his telescope was of poor quality and described them as ears hanging off the sides of the planet as he didn’t realize they were rings.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Telescope discovered a galaxy that shouldn’t exist under today’s scientific laws.