Non Optical Telescope Essay

By Caolan Griffin

Optical and non-optical telescopes are essential tools for the advancement of human research. Optical telescopes gathers and focuses light to create a magnified image or photograph, where as non-optical telescopes sense other things on the radio spectrum such as radio waves, gamma waves and X rays. Without non optical telescopes advancement’s in many areas such as medicine, television and radios would be impossible.

Within the non-optical telescope branch there are many different telescopes each specified to view different frequencies. A type of non-optical telescope which is used very regularly is a Radio telescope. Radio telescopes operate in the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic shaped antennas as can be seen below. The parabolic shape of the dish reflects the radio waves the same way a convex or a concave mirror can focus light into a focal point. These radio waves get

If a lens is convex or converging, it takes parallel light waves from a distant body and refracts them so that they congregate to a single point called the focal point. This light is then augmented to the focal length and this is where the image is created. At the eye piece there is then a concave glass lens to magnify this image. The main limitations of this telescope is due to the light being bent and the and the large size of the lens the image can sometimes be blurred which limits the power of the telescope.

Newtonian reflecting telescope uses curved mirrors to focus the light instead of convex lenses that are used in refracting telescopes. The light enters in parallel rays where they are then reflected using a concave mirror. The light is then reflected onto a diagonal pane mirror until it eventually reaches a small viewing whole or eye