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Articles on Telescope

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Changes in light qualities during a solar eclipse are quick and drastic, so familiarity with aperture and shutter speed are important. People with cameras among viewers of a partial solar eclipse in Yanguan town, Haining City, China, in 2009. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Photographing the eclipse? You’ll join a long history of people seeking proof of experience

Apart from technical aspects, a successful photograph of the eclipse serves as a lasting reminder of the sense of wonder and the feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves.
The Herschel Museum in Bath, England, has a new display of a handwritten draft of Caroline Herschel’s memoirs. Internet Archive Book Images via Wikimedia Commons

Caroline Herschel was England’s first female professional astronomer, but still lacks name recognition two centuries later

Astronomer Caroline Herschel’s work discovering and cataloging astronomical objects in the 18th century is still used in the field today, but she didn’t always get her due credit.
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.
New research shows that the destructive merging of a star and a planet expels huge amounts of gas, as shown in this artist’s impression. K. Miller/R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)

Astronomers just saw a star eat a planet – an astrophysicist on the team explains the first-of-its-kind discovery

Stars begin to expand when they run out of fuel and can become thousands of times larger, consuming any planets in the way. For the first time, astronomers have witnessed one such event.
The star system V883 Orionis contains a rare star surrounded by a disk of gas, ice and dust. A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Water in space – a ‘Goldilocks’ star reveals previously hidden step in how water gets to planets like Earth

Astronomers have long known where water is first formed in the universe and how it ends up on planets, asteroids and comets. A recent discovery has finally answered what happens in between.
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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