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Articles on Space telescopes

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A light, cheap space telescope design would make it possible to put many individual units in space at once. Katie Yung, Daniel Apai /University of Arizona and AllThingsSpace /SketchFab

A new, thin-lensed telescope design could far surpass James Webb – goodbye mirrors, hello diffractive lenses

Space telescopes are limited in size due to the difficulties and cost of getting into orbit. By revamping an old optical technology, researchers are working on a lightweight and thin telescope design.
The mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope is fully aligned and producing incredibly sharp images, like this test image of a star. NASA/STScI via Flickr

The James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready to do science – and it’s seeing the universe more clearly than even its own engineers hoped for

It has taken eight months to test and calibrate all of the instruments and modes of the James Webb Space Telescope. A scientist on the team explains what it took to get Webb up and running.
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The best gift in the galaxy: an astronomer’s guide to buying a home telescope

There’s an extensive range of telescopes, mounts and accessories on the market, and trying to pick from it might have you seeing stars. Here’s what the experts suggest.
Today we hear about some of the fascinating space research underway at Siding Spring Observatory – and how, despite gruelling hours and endless paperwork, astronomers retain their sense of wonder for the night sky. Shutterstock

‘The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark’: what it’s like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory

‘The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark’: what it’s like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory The Conversation, CC BY54.3 MB (download)
Three hours north-east of Parkes lies a remote astronomical research facility, unpolluted by city lights, where researchers are trying to unlock some of the biggest questions about our Universe.
Technicians prepare Swift’s UVOT for vibration testing on Aug. 1, 2002, more than two years before launch, in the High Bay Clean Room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Swift’s telescope reveals birth, deaths and collisions of stars through 1 million snapshots in UV

The Swift Observatory passed a milestone: 1 million snapshots of the universe. These exquisite and revealing pictures have captured the births and deaths of stars, gravitational waves and comets.
Imagined view from Kepler-10b, a planet that orbits one of the 150,000 stars that the Kepler spacecraft is monitoring. NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry

Goodbye Kepler, hello TESS: Passing the baton in the search for distant planets

When NASA first started planning the Kepler mission, no one knew if the universe held any planets outside our solar system. Thousands of exoplanets later, the search enters a new phase as Kepler retires.

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