101 ASTRONOMY & SPACE SCIENCES

CHAPTER 5
GUIDEPOSTS

LIGHT AND TELESCOPES

SUMMARY - GUIDEPOSTS
5-1 RADIATION: INFORMATION FROM SPACE
What is light?
Light is the visible form of electromagnetic radiation, an electric and magnetic disturbance that transports
energy at the speed of light. The electromagnetic spectrum includes, gamma rays, X rays, ultraviolet
radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, and radio waves.
You can think of a particle of light, a photon, as a bundle of waves that acts sometimes as a particle and
sometimes as a wave.
The energy a photon carries depends on its wavelength. The wavelength of visible light, usually measured
in nanometers (10-9 m) or Angstroms (10-10 m), ranges from 400 nm to 700 nm. Radio and infrared
radiation have longer wavelengths and carry less energy. X-ray, gamma ray, and ultraviolet radiation have
shorter wavelengths and more energy.
Wavelength is related to frequency, the number of waves that pass a point in one second.
Earths atmosphere is transparent in only two atmospheric windowsvisible light and radio.

5-2 OPTICAL TELESCOPES

How do telescopes work, and how are they limited?
Astronomical telescopes use a primary lens or mirror (also called an objective lens or mirror) to gather light
and bring it to a prime focus where it can be magnified by an eyepiece. Short-focal-length lenses and
mirrors must be more strongly curved and are more expensive to grind to shape.
A refracting telescope uses a lens to bend the light and focus it into an image. Because of chromatic
aberration, refracting telescopes cannot bring all colors to the same focus, resulting in color fringes around
the images. An achromatic lens partially corrects for this, but such lenses are expensive and cannot be made
much larger than about 1 m in diameter.
Reflecting telescopes use a mirror to focus the light and are less expensive than refracting telescopes of the
same diameter. Also, reflecting telescopes do not suffer from chromatic aberration. Most recently built
large telescopes are reflectors.
Light-gathering power refers to the ability of a telescope to produce bright images. Resolving power refers
to the ability of a telescope to resolve fine detail. Diffraction fringes in the image limit the detail visible.
Magnifying power is less important because it can be changed by changing the eyepiece.

Astronomers build observatories on remote, high mountains for two reasons. Turbulence in Earths
atmosphere blurs the image of an astronomical telescope, a phenomenon that astronomers refer to as
seeing. Atop a mountain, the air is steady, and the seeing is better. Observatories are remote from cities to
avoid light pollution.
Light first comes to a focus at the prime focus, but secondary mirrors can direct light to other focus
locations such as a Cassegrain focus or a Newtonian focus. The Schmidt-Cassegrain focus is popular for
small telescopes.
Because Earth rotates, telescopes must have a sidereal drive to follow the stars. An equatorial mounting
with a polar axis makes this possible, but alt-azimuth mountings are becoming more popular.
Very large telescopes can be built with active optics maintaining the shape of floppy mirrors that are thin or
in segments. High-speed adaptive optics controls the shape of telescope mirrors and partially cancels out
seeing turbulence.
Interferometry refers to connecting two or more separate telescopes together to act as a single large
telescope which has a resolution equivalent to that of a telescope as large in diameter as the separation
between the telescopes.

5-3 ASTRONOMY FROM SPACE

Why must some telescopes go into space?
Earths atmosphere absorbs gamma rays, X rays, ultraviolet, and far-infrared. To observe at these
wavelengths, telescopes must be located in space.
Earths atmosphere distorts and blurs images. Telescopes in orbit are above this seeing distortion and are
limited only by diffraction in their optics.