Astronomical Instruments

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 1

 Early Telescopes
Ancient cultures built special sites, called
observatories, for observing the sky
At these observatories, they were able to
measure the positions of celestial objects that
were visible to the naked eye
Telescopes were first used to observe the sky
by Galileo Galilei, and so they
are a relatively recent addition
to the tools astronomers use
The use of telescopes, however,
completely revolutionized our
ideas about the universe

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 2

 Galileo’s Telescopes
Galileo first used a telescope
to observe the sky in 1610
His telescopes were simple
tubes held by hand
They were also small in
comparison to the telescopes
in use today
The use of these small telescopes
allowed Galileo to revolutionize the field
of astronomy

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 3

 Why Use Telescopes to Observe the Sky?
Celestial objects — planets, stars, galaxies, etc. —
emit (or reflect) light in many different directions
Only a minuscule fraction of the light emitted (or
reflected) by celestial objects is captured by the
human eye, with its tiny opening
The light not shining into the eye is “wasted”
Most objects of interest to astronomers are
extremely faint
The more light from such objects we can collect,
the better we can study them
A telescope is a very important tool because it
has a much larger opening than the human eye
and, therefore, captures much more light
focuses all the light collected into an image much
better than the naked eye can
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 4
 Telescopes of All Kinds
Stars and other celestial objects emit all types
of electromagnetic waves, not only visible light
Nowadays, there are types of telescopes that
collect not visible light, but other forms of EM
radiation, such as radio waves, infrared,
ultraviolet, X-rays, and even gamma rays
Such telescopes may use collecting devices
that look very different from the lenses and
mirrors used in visible-light telescopes, but
those devices serve the same function

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 5

 Aperture
In telescopes of all types, the light-gathering
ability is determined by the area of the device
acting as the main collector of light (or other
forms of electromagnetic radiation)
The aperture of a telescope with round lenses and
mirrors corresponds to the diameter of its primary
lens or primary reflector (mirror)
The light-gathering power of a telescope is
determined by its aperture
The amount of light a telescope can collect
increases with the square of the aperture
For example, an aperture with a 4-meter diameter
can collect 16 times as much light as an aperture
with a 1-meter diameter

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 6

 Need for Images
The study of astronomical objects
requires the formation of their images
Once formed, each of the images can be
looked at directly with the naked eye
imprinted on a photographic film
detected and recorded with various light-
sensitive devices

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 7

 Telescope Images in History
Before the 20th century, telescope images
were simply looked at with the naked eye
This was a rather inefficient and unreliable way of
gathering/collecting and preserving the information
In the 20th century, before the arrival of
computers, images were imprinted/recorded
on photographic films
Nowadays, astronomers actually rarely look
through the larger telescopes
Most images are recorded electronically on
computers

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 8

 Formation of Image by Lens
A convex lens is a transparent piece of
material that bends parallel rays of light
passing through it and brings them to a
focus or focal point
 Eyepiece
Telescopes use a combination of lenses and
mirrors to produce images
An image formed by the primary lens of a
telescope can be viewed, and magnified, by
using a second, smaller lens called an
eyepiece
Nowadays, the
eyepiece of a
telescope is
usually replaced
by a camera or
electronic light
detector

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 10

 Magnification
The eyepiece can magnify the image
Stars are typically so distant that they
appear as points of light, and consequently
magnification does not do much
Planets, however, are much closer, and
galaxies much bigger, than stars so that
magnification is actually quite useful to see
the shape and structure of planets and
galaxies

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 11

 Concave Mirrors
A telescope can also be built using a concave
mirror to form an image Convex lens

Such a mirror reflects

incoming parallel rays
through its focus
Thus images can be
produced by a concave
mirror exactly as they Concave mirror
are by a convex lens

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 12

 Basic Designs of Visible-Light Telescopes
Refracting telescopes Reflecting telescopes

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 13

 Refracting Telescopes
In a refractor (refracting telescope), the
primary light-gathering device is a convex lens
Galileo's telescopes were all refractors, as are
today’s binoculars and
opera glasses
Refractors are not good
for most astronomical
applications
It is very difficult to make
a large lens without flaws
and support it without
causing it to become
distorted

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 14

 Reflecting Telescopes Newton’s
telescope

Telescopes designed with mirrors

avoid the problems of refractors
with large lenses
The first successful reflecting
telescope (reflector ) was built by
Newton in 1668
A concave mirror is placed at the
bottom of the reflecting telescope
The mirror reflects the light back
up the tube to form an image near the front end at a
location called the prime focus
Images can be observed directly at the prime focus,
or additional mirrors can be used to redirect the light
to a more convenient location
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 15
 Focus Arrangements for Reflecting Telescopes
Different options
for where the
light is brought
to a focus

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 16

 Some Large-Aperture Telescopes (1)
The Hale telescope on
Palomar Mountain in
southern California
is a reflector Keck

was built in 1948

has a mirror that is
5 meters (200 in) in
diameter
was the world’s largest
visible-light telescope for
45 years
Website
 Some Large-Aperture Telescopes (2)
Two Keck telescopes
on (dormant) Mauna
Kea volcano in Hawaii
became operational
in 1993-1996
each have a mirror
that is 10 meters in
diameter and
composed of 36
hexagonal sections
are sensitive to both visible and
infrared wavelengths
Website
 Resolution of Telescope
In addition to collecting as much light as they can,
astronomers also seek to get the sharpest images
possible
Sharper images provide more details about the objects
observed
The resolution of a telescope refers to the fineness of
detail present in the images it produces
The resolution of an image is measured in units of
angle on the sky
The angular size is typically expressed in arcseconds
One arcsec is 1/3600 degree — a very tiny angle!
One arcsec is how a quarter would look like when seen
from a distance of 5 km (3 mi)
One of the factors that determine resolution is the
telescope’s aperture
Larger apertures result in sharper images
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 19
 Important External Factor Limiting Resolution
External factors, however, can also affect the
resolution
Turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere above a
telescope results in the blurring of the images it
produces
The “twinkling” of stars as seen with the naked eye
from Earth is a result of atmospheric turbulence
In the absence of the atmosphere, the light of stars
appears steady
Therefore, it is important to place telescopes at
high altitudes where atmospheric blurring is
minimized
Telescopes mounted in outer space, above the
Earth's atmosphere, are not affected by
atmospheric blurring
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 20
 Adaptive Optics
The technique of
adaptive optics can
make corrections
for atmospheric
blurring

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 21

 Additional Factors Affecting Performance of Telescopes
The weather — clouds, wind, rain, etc — is the most
obvious limitation
At the best sites, it is clear as much as 75% of the time
The atmosphere filters out certain amount of starlight
Water vapor absorbs much of the infrared
The preferred sites are dry, at high altitudes
“Light pollution” in the sky often occurs near cities
This is the scattering by air of the glare from city lights
producing an illumination that hides the faintest stars
The best sites have dark sky, far away from large cities
The air is often unsteady
Light passing turbulent air is disturbed, resulting in
blurred images — an effect called “bad seeing”
Sites with steady atmosphere are preferred
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 22
 Visible-Light Detecting (1)
After capturing the radiation from celestial
objects, astronomers sort it according to
wavelength
The instruments used may be as simple as
colored filters or a complicated spectrometer
A spectrometer is an instrument designed
to disperse light into a spectrum to be
recorded for detailed analysis
Spectroscopy is one of the most powerful
techniques used in astronomy
After the radiation passes through the
sorting instruments, its properties are
recorded and measured using detectors
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 23
 A Prism Spectometer

Nowadays, the prism is replaced by a diffraction

grating, which is a piece of transparent material with
thousands of grooves in its surface that also cause the
light waves to spread out into a spectrum
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 24
 Visible-Light Detecting (2)
Throughout most of the 20th century, photographic
films, or plates, served as the main astronomical
detectors
In a plate, a light-sensitive chemical coating is applied
to a piece of glass which, when developed, provides a
lasting record of the image
Although photographic films represent a large
improvement over the human eye, they are inefficient,
only recording about 1% of the light incident on them
Astronomers now use much more efficient electronic
detectors to record images
Most often, these are charge-coupled devices (CCDs),
which are similar to the detectors used in video
camcorders or in digital cameras
CCDs record up to 70% of the photons that strike them,
resulting in much sharper images, and also provide
output that can go directly to a computer for analysis
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 25
 Infrared Observations
Observing the sky in the infrared band presents
additional challenges
The infrared extends from wavelengths near 1
micrometer out to 100 micrometer or longer
Infrared radiation is basically heat radiation
The human body emits heat in the infrared range
A big challenge: at typical temperatures on Earth’s
surface, the telescope being used and the atmosphere
are all emitting infrared radiation!
To infrared “eyes”, everything on Earth is brightly aglow
The challenge is to detect faint cosmic sources against
this sea of infrared
The solution is to isolate the detector in very cold
surroundings, often held near absolute zero
temperature (1-3 kelvin), by immersing them in liquid
helium
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 26
 Radio Telescopes
Radio emission was discovered by Karl G. Jansky, an
engineer of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in 1931
In 1936, Grote Reber built from galvanized iron and
wood the first antenna specifically designed receive
cosmic radio waves
Over the years, he built several antennas and conducted
pioneering surveys of the sky for celestial radio sources
In commercial radio broadcasting, sound information
is encoded at the source and decoded at the receiving
ends, the listener's radios where they are played into
headphones or speakers
Radio waves from space do not contain music or other
types of human information
The waves nonetheless carry some information about
the chemistry and physical conditions of their sources

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 27

 Radio Astronomy
Radio waves can produce an electric current in
conductors (such as metals)
An antenna is such a conductor
It intercepts the path of waves which in turn induce
a small current in it
The current is then amplified in a radio receiver and
recorded
Receivers, like our TV or radio sets, can be
tuned to select a single frequency (channel)
An astronomical radio telescope provides radio
spectra, giving information about how much
radiation we receive at each wavelength or
frequency

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 28

Radio Telescopes
A radio-reflecting telescope
consists of a concave metal
reflector, called a dish, quite
analogous to an optical
telescope mirror
The radio waves collected by
the dish are reflected to the
focal point of the reflector
where a receiver detects the
waves and record them
Astronomers often construct a pictorial representation
of the radio sources they observe in order to
communicate and visualize their data more easily

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 29

 A Radio Image

Colors have been added to help the eye sort out regions of different
intensities. Red regions are the most intense, blue the least

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 30

Green Bank Telescope
This is the world's
largest fully steerable
radio telescope
located at the National
Radio Astronomy
Observatory in West
Virginia
with a dish about 100
meters across
that can be pointed to
any direction in the sky

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 31

Arecibo Telescope (1)
It is the world’s largest
radar telescope
consisting of a 305-m
fixed reflecting surface,
made up of 40,000
individual panels
It is suspended in a natural limestone sinkhole
in northwestern Puerto Rico
Incoming rays are reflected back from the
surface to two additional reflectors located
450 feet above on the “platform”, a 500-ton
structure supported by cables from three
towers

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 32

Arecibo Telescope (2)

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 33

 Radio Interferometry (1)
A telescope resolution depends primarily on its
aperture
It also depends on the wavelength of the wave being
detected
The longer the waves, the harder it becomes to detect
fine details
Radio waves have very large wavelengths
Substantial challenges for astronomers who need good
resolution
The largest radio dishes cannot have poorer resolution
than small optical telescopes
To overcome this difficulty, astronomers have learned
to link two or more radio telescopes together
electronically, and succeeded in greatly sharpening
the images they get

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 34

 Radio Interferometry (2)
An array of telescopes linked together in this way is
called an interferometer
The word indicates that
these devices operate via
a measurement of the
degree of interference
between different waves
Interference is a technical
term for the way waves that arrive in a detector at
slightly different times interact with each other
The resolution of an interferometer depends on the
separation of the telescopes, not on their individual
apertures
Even better resolution can be achieved by combining
more than two reflectors into an interferometer array

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 35

VLA
The most extensive
such instrument is
the National Radio
Astronomical
Observatory's Very
Large Array (VLA)
near Socorro, New Mexico
It consists of 27 movable radio telescopes,
each having an aperture of 25 m, spread over a
total span of about 36 km
The telescopes signals are combined electronically
and permit astronomers to obtain pictures of the
sky with a resolution comparable to those obtained
with an optical telescope with a resolution of about
1 arcsecond
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 36
 Observations Outside Earth's Atmosphere
Earth's atmosphere blocks most radiation at
wavelengths shorter than those of visible light
It is thus possible to make astronomical
observation at these wavelengths only from space
Getting around the disturbing effects of the
atmosphere is also a great advantage at
visible and infrared wavelengths
Since stars do not twinkle in empty space, the
resolution is far superior than that on Earth
The resolution thus becomes solely limited by
the size and quality of the instrument used to
collect the light
8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 37
 Hubble Space Telescope (1)
Launched in April 1990,
it permitted a giant leap
forward in astronomy
It has an aperture of
2.4 m
the largest of those
put in space to date
limited by the payload
of the space shuttle used to put it in orbit
It was named after Edwin Hubble, the astronomer
who discovered the expansion of the universe in
the 1920s

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 38

 Hubble Space Telescope (2)
It is operated jointly by NASA’s Goddard
Space-Flight Center and the Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore
It was the first orbiting observatory
designed to be serviced
by shuttle astronauts
Visits by astronauts in
1993, 1997, and 1999
allowed improvements
and replacements of the
initial instruments

8 Jul 2005 AST 2010: Chapter 5 39