Optical Devices

THE ASTRONOMICAL TELESCOPE IN SOCIETY
“A single lens cannot produce a magnified image of a distant object. But two lenses can…”

Physics is a very important science which has been applied in great amounts over the last few decades. But what is it actually? Most of the people seem to believe that it is useless in the sense that they learn most of its bases without being able to apply themsuccessfully. Truth be told, most of the technology and inventions which have been created in the human’s society have had to do with this topic in one way or another. The entire world around us is composed of objects which are too far away to observe, years ago, our society wondered greatly on what lied ahead, far from the planet and into the space. Complex theories related to faith and gods were sooninvented, and people just pondered without being able to discover the truth. It was then, that Galileo invented the telescope around the 1600s and every since then, its theory and application has incremented immensely creating as an outcome a tool essential in our world.

We as humans are not able to see in great detail objects that are really far away because light does not take enough spacein our retina, this make the messages sent to the optic nerve a little bit slower and much less clearer. The telescope is composed of two lenses: the object lens, and the eye lens. These are both convex and work together to create a magnified image of a far away object. The object lens works by creating a small, inverted, real image. It takes up the light and bends it to towards the focus. Theeyepiece on the other hand, brings it from the focus and magnifies it to the size of your eye’s pupil. It is sort of used like a magnifying glass, but in this case it magnifies the image instead of the real object. There are two aspects of the telescope that vary from one another: the magnification and the light-gathering power. The magnification of the telescope relies on the size of the objectwhich is being observed as well as the focal length of the telescope in general. In order to improve the light-gathering power, the diameter of the object lens must be big because it permits more light to enter and causes an image that can be seen so much better. Telescopes also have to be adjusted because the light has to enter in the focus, or else the image would get a little bit distorted. Ifthis isn’t well managed, it can cause a tiring effect for the viewer, and the object wouldn’t be considered of good quality.

There are many good and bad aspects of telescopes that have to be discussed at times, because polemic deliberations have been created on whether it is logical or not to use these in our daily lives. The first advantage of using one of these is that you prevent atmosphericdistortion, so you don’t have to look through the earth’s atmosphere. In simpler terms, you overpass the general pollution and meet only that which is going to be observed in detail. The fact that astronomic telescopes are located beyond the earth helps us notice that there are different wavelengths of light, it gives us an idea of the future scientific ideals, and serve as an inspiration foreveryone. There are some disadvantages as well, first of all the size of these instruments tend to be extremely large and even though that brings a great advantage concerning light-gathering ability, at times it is very complicated because it causes great costs which should at times improve. Since GOOD telescopes are hard to produce, one simple disadvantage is the availability of one, they have greatcosts and are really hard to construct. Yet still, as the years go on. The process becomes more and more simple, and people learn more about the theory of its creation. Finally, telescopes don’t have problems managing the weather, it is very positive because they don’t damage easily by reoccurring natural disasters or difficulties.

Since the object has pros and cons, the general impact on the...