Planetary Sciences:

Earth and Beyond

Lecture 33
Optics and Telescopes

GNR 649
Images credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona and NOAO.
Overview
• As seen through a small telescope, the galaxy M82 (previous image)
appears as a bright patch that glows with the light of its billions of stars.
• But when observed with a telescope sensitive to infrared light—M82
displays an immense halo that extends for tens of thousands of light-years.
• The spectrum of this halo reveals it to be composed of tiny dust particles,
which are ejected by newly formed stars.
• The halo’s immense size shows that new stars are forming in M82 at a far
greater rate than within our own galaxy.
• These observations are just one example of the tremendous importance of
telescopes to astronomy.
Introduction
• Whether a telescope detects visible or nonvisible light, its fundamental
purpose is the same: to gather more light than the unaided human eye.
• Telescopes are used to gather the feeble light from distant objects to make
bright, sharp images. Telescopes also produce finely detailed spectra of
objects in space.
• In addition to infrared telescopes, radio telescopes have mapped out the
structure of our Milky Way Galaxy, ultraviolet telescopes have revealed the
workings of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, and gamma-ray telescopes have
detected the most powerful explosions in the universe.
• The telescope, in all its variations, is by far astronomers’ most useful tool
for collecting data about the universe.
Refraction
• Refraction is the change in direction of a light ray when it passes into
or out of a transparent medium such as glass.
• When light rays pass through a flat piece of glass, the two refractions
bend the rays in opposite directions. There is no overall change in the
direction in which the light travels.
• If the glass is in the shape of a convex lens, parallel light rays converge
to a focus at a special point called the focal point.
• The distance from the lens to the focal point is called the focal length
of the lens.
Refracting Telescope
• The optical telescope—that is, a telescope designed for use with
visible light
• The first telescopes used carefully shaped pieces of glass, or lenses, to
make distant objects appear larger and brighter. Telescopes of this
same basic design are used today by many amateur astronomers.
• Lenses used in telescopes gather and focus light. Larger lenses can
gather more light, which is why professional telescopes must be big.
• To use a lens to make a permanent picture of an astronomical object,
you would place an electronic detector in the focal plane—the same
type of detector used in digital cameras.
Refracting Telescope
• If someone wants to view the image with
their eye, not a camera, so they add a
second lens to magnify the image formed in
the focal plane. Such an arrangement of
two lenses is called a refracting telescope,
or refractor
• The large-diameter, long-focal-length lens
at the front of the telescope, called the
objective lens, forms the image; the
smaller, shorter-focal-length lens at the rear
of the telescope, called the eyepiece lens,
magnifies the image for the observer.
• To take a photograph, the eyepiece is
removed and an electronic detector is
placed in the focal plane.
Light Gathering Power
• Compared with a small diameter lens, a large-diameter lens captures more
light, produces brighter images, and allows astronomers to detect fainter
objects.
• The light-gathering power of a telescope is directly proportional to the
area of the objective lens, which in turn is proportional to the square of the
lens diameter.
• Thus, if you double the diameter of the lens, the light-gathering power
increases by a factor of 4
• Because light-gathering power is so important for seeing faint objects, the
lens diameter is almost always given when describing a telescope.
• For example, the Lick telescope on Mount Hamilton in California is a 90-cm
refractor, which means that it is a refracting telescope whose objective lens
is 90 cm in diameter. By comparison, Galileo’s telescope of 1610 was a 3-
cm refractor.
Magnification
• The magnification of a telescope is equal to the focal length of the
objective divided by the focal length of the eyepiece.
• Telescopic eyepieces are usually interchangeable, so the
magnification of a telescope can be changed by using eyepieces of
different focal lengths.
• The magnification of a refracting telescope depends on the focal
lengths of both of its lenses

𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑂𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝐿𝑒𝑛𝑠

𝑀𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 =
𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝐸𝑦𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑒𝑐𝑒 𝐿𝑒𝑛𝑠
Example
• A small refracting telescope with an objective focal length of 120 cm
and the eyepiece focal length of 4 cm
120
𝑀𝑎𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = = 30
4
• A magnification of 30x means that, as viewed through this telescope,
an object that subtends an angle of 1 arcminute to the naked eye will
appear to subtend an angle 30 times greater, or 30 arcminutes
• Many people think that the primary purpose of a telescope is to
magnify images.
Limitations!
• Magnification is not the most important aspect of a telescope because
there is a limit to how sharp any astronomical image can be, due either to
the blurring caused by Earth’s atmosphere or to fundamental limitations
imposed by the nature of light itself.
• Magnifying a blurred image may make it look bigger, but it will not make it
any clearer.
• Thus, beyond a certain point, there is nothing to be gained by further
magnification.
• Astronomers prioritize the light-gathering power of a telescope over its
magnification.
• Greater light-gathering power means brighter images, which makes it
easier to see faint details.
Chromatic Aberration
• If you were to build a telescope using discussions given so far, you
would probably be disappointed with the results.
• The problem is that a lens bends different colors of light through
different angles, just as a prism does.
• As a result, different colors do not focus at the same point, and stars
viewed through a telescope that uses a simple lens are surrounded by
fuzzy, rainbow-colored halos.
• This optical defect is called chromatic aberration
Chromatic Aberration
• One way to correct for chromatic aberration is to use an objective
lens that is not just a single piece of glass.
• If a thin lens is mounted just behind the main objective lens of a
telescope, and if the telescope designer carefully chooses two
different kinds of glass for these two lenses, different colors of light
can be brought to a focus at the same point.
Disadvantages of Refracting Telescopes
• Unfortunately, there are several negative aspects of refractors that even the
finest optician cannot overcome:
1. Because faint light must readily pass through the objective lens, the glass from
which the lens is made must be totally free of defects, such as the bubbles that
frequently form when molten glass is poured into a mold. Such defect-free
glass is extremely expensive.
2. Glass is opaque to certain kinds of light. Ultraviolet light is absorbed almost
completely, and even visible light is dimmed substantially as it passes through
the thick slab of glass that makes up the objective lens.
3. It is impossible to produce a large lens that is entirely free of chromatic
aberration.
4. Because a lens can be supported only around its edges, a large lens tends to
sag and distort under its own weight as it tracks objects through the night. This
distortion has negative effects on the image clarity.
• Presently, astronomers have avoided all the limitations of refractors by building
telescopes that use mirrors instead of lenses to form images.
Reflecting Telescope

• A reflecting telescope uses a mirror to concentrate incoming light at a

focus
• Almost all modern telescopes form an image using the principle of
reflection.
• In 1663, the Scottish mathematician James Gregory first proposed a
telescope using reflection from a concave mirror—one that is fatter at
the edges than at the middle. Such a mirror makes parallel light rays
converge to a focus.
• Telescope that uses a curved mirror to make an image of a distant
object is called a reflecting telescope, or reflector. Using terminology
similar to that used for refractors, the mirror that forms the image is
called the objective mirror or primary mirror.
Reflecting Telescope
• To make a reflector mirror, an optician grinds and polishes a large slab of
glass into the appropriate concave shape. The glass is then coated with
highly reflective substance.
• Because light reflects off the surface of the coated glass rather than passing
through it, which has no effect on the optical quality of a reflecting
telescope.
• Another advantage of reflector mirrors is that they do not suffer from the
chromatic aberration that plagues refractors.
• This is because reflection is not affected by the wavelength of the incoming
light (only the angle at which it hits the mirror), so all wavelengths are
reflected to the same focus. (A small amount of chromatic aberration may
arise if the image is viewed using an eyepiece lens.)
• Furthermore, the mirror can be fully supported by braces on its back, so
that a large, heavy mirror can be mounted and well-supported without its
shape warping much from gravity.
Designing Reflecting Telescope
• Although a reflecting telescope has many advantages over a refractor, the
arrangement is not ideal.
• One problem is that the focal point is in front of the objective mirror. If you
try to view the image formed at the focal point, your head will block part or
all of the light from reaching the mirror.
• To get around this problem, in 1668 Isaac Newton simply placed a small,
flat mirror at a 45° angle in front of the focal point
• This secondary mirror deflects the light rays to one side, where Newton
placed an eyepiece lens to magnify the image. A reflecting telescope with
this optical design is appropriately called a Newtonian reflector
• The magnifying power of a Newtonian reflector is calculated in the same
way as for a refractor: The focal length of the objective mirror is divided by
the focal length of the eyepiece
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=513483

Newtonian Reflector
A replica of Newton’s second reflecting
telescope, which he presented to the
Royal Society in 1672.

Newtonian telescope design

Other design variations

• A popular optical design, called a Cassegrain focus after the French

contemporary of Newton who first proposed it, also has a convenient,
accessible focal point. A hole is drilled directly through the center of
the primary mirror, and a convex secondary mirror placed in front of
the original focal point reflects the light rays back through the hole
• Another design is useful when there is optical equipment too heavy
or bulky to mount directly on the telescope. Instead, a series of
mirrors channels the light rays away from the telescope to a remote
focal point where the equipment is located. This design is called a
coudé focus, from a French word meaning “bent like an elbow”
What about center spot?
• You might think that the secondary mirror would cause a black spot
or hole in the center of the telescope image.
• However, this spot does not form because the light from every part of
the object lands on every part of the primary, objective mirror.
• Hence, any portion of the mirror can itself produce an image of the
distant object.
• The only effect of the secondary mirror is that it prevents part of the
light from reaching the objective mirror, which reduces somewhat the
total light-gathering power of the telescope.
• This makes the image a bit dimmer by reducing the total amount of
light that reaches the primary mirror.
Spherical Aberration
• A reflecting telescope must be designed to minimize a defect called
spherical aberration.
• Issue is the precise shape of a mirror’s concave surface. Different parts of a
spherical mirror focus light onto slightly different spots, which results in a
fuzzy image.
• One common way to eliminate spherical aberration is to design mirror in a
parabolic shape, because a parabola reflects parallel light rays to a
common focus. Unfortunately, the astronomer then no longer has a wide-
angle view.
• Furthermore, unlike spherical mirrors, parabolic mirrors suffer from a
defect called coma, wherein star images far from the center of the field of
view are elongated to look like tiny teardrops.
• A different approach is to use a spherical mirror, thus minimizing coma, and
to place a thin correcting lens at the front of the telescope to eliminate
spherical aberration
Spherical Aberration
• (a) Different parts of a spherically
concave mirror reflect light to slightly
different points. This effect, called
spherical aberration, causes image
blurring, but the difficulty can be
corrected by either (b) using a
parabolic mirror or (c) using a
correcting lens in front of the mirror.
Angular Resolution
• One factor limiting angular resolution is diffraction, which is the tendency
of light waves to spread out when they are confined to a small area like the
lens or mirror of a telescope. (A rough analogy is the way water exiting a
garden hose sprays out in a wider angle when you cover part of the end of
the hose with your thumb.)
• As a result of diffraction, a narrow beam of light tends to spread out within
a telescope’s optics, thus blurring the image.
• The angular resolution of a telescope would be given by
5
𝜆
𝜃 = 2.5 × 10
𝐷
• where, θ = diffraction-limited angular resolution of a telescope, in
arcseconds; λ = wavelength of light, in meters; D = diameter of telescope
objective, in meters
Three-mirror anastigmat
• A three-mirror anastigmat is an anastigmat telescope built with three
curved mirrors, enabling it to minimize all three main optical
aberrations – spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism.
• This is primarily used to enable wide fields of view, much larger than
possible with telescopes with just one or two curved surfaces.
• An optical system with astigmatism is one where rays that propagate
in two perpendicular planes have different foci.
• If an optical system with astigmatism is used to form an image of a
cross, the vertical and horizontal lines will be in sharp focus at two
different distances. The term comes from the Greek meaning
“without a mark, spot, or puncture”.
Three-mirror anastigmat of Paul or Paul–Baker form. A Paul design has a parabolic
primary with spherical secondary and tertiary mirrors; a Paul–Baker design modifies the
secondary slightly to flatten the focal plane. https://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/about/three-mirror.telescope
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
• JWST’s primary mirror, the Optical Telescope Element, consists of 18
hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium which combine
to create a 6.5-meter diameter mirror, compared to Hubble’s 2.4 m.
• The JWST has a light collecting area about 6.25 times as large as Hubble’s:
Webb’s collecting area is 25.37 square meters compared to Hubble’s 4.0.
• Unlike Hubble, which observes in the 0.1–1.0 μm spectra, JWST will
observe in a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light
(red) through mid-infrared (0.6–28.3 μm).
• The telescope must be kept extremely cold, below 50 K (−223 °C), to
observe faint signals in the infrared without interference from any other
sources of warmth.
• It is deployed in a solar orbit near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, about
1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth, where its five layer kite-
shaped sunshield protects it from warming by the Sun, Earth and Moon.
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
• If the primary mirror were built as a single large mirror, this would have
been too large for existing launch vehicles. The mirror is therefore
composed of 18 hexagonal segments (Guido Horn d’Arturo’s multi-mirror
telescope), which unfolded after the telescope was launched.
• The Webb telescope uses 132 small motors (called actuators) to position
and occasionally adjust the optics as there are few environmental
disturbances of a telescope in space.
• JWST’s optical design is a three-mirror anastigmat. The secondary mirror is
0.74 m diameter. In addition, there is a fine steering mirror which can
adjust its position many times per second to provide image stabilization.
• The primary mirror segments are hollowed at the rear in a honeycomb
pattern, to reduce weight.
Three-quarter view of the top Bottom (Sun-facing side)

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/multimedia/images.html
 https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-takes-
star-filled-portrait-of-pillars-of-creation
Pillars of Creation
Radio Telescope
• A typical modern radio telescope has a large parabolic dish. An antenna
tuned to the desired frequency is located at the focus (like the prime focus
design for optical reflecting telescopes).
• The incoming signal is relayed from the antenna to amplifiers and recording
instruments, typically located in a room at the base of the telescope’s pier.
• Since astronomical radio sources such as planets, stars, nebulas and
galaxies are very far away, the radio waves coming from them are
extremely weak, so radio telescopes require very large antennas to collect
enough radio energy to study them, and extremely sensitive receiving
equipment.
• Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic (“dish”) antennas similar to
those employed in tracking and communicating with satellites and space
probes. They may be used singly or linked together electronically in an
array.
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104342305

Radio Telescope
Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope

• Many radio telescope dishes have

visible gaps in them like a wire mesh.
• This does not affect their reflecting
power because the holes are much
smaller than the wavelengths of the
radio waves; the radio waves reflect
from the wire mesh as if from a solid
surface.
• The same idea is used in the design of
microwave ovens.
Angular Resolution
• One great drawback of early radio telescopes was their very poor angular
resolution
• The problem is that diffraction-limited angular resolution is directly
proportional to the wavelength being observed: The longer the
wavelength, the larger (and hence worse) the angular resolution and the
fuzzier the image.
• As an example, a 1-m radio telescope detecting radio waves of 5-cm
wavelength has an angular resolution 100,000 times poorer than a 1-m
optical telescope.
• A very large radio telescope can produce a somewhat sharper radio image,
because as the diameter of the telescope increases, the angular resolution
decreases.
 http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/

Radio telescope array

• To improve angular resolution at radio
wavelengths, astronomers combine
observations from two or more widely
separated radio telescopes using the
interferometry technique.
• Interferometry using radio waves is much
easier than for visible or infrared light
because radio signals can be carried over
electrical wires. Socorro, New Mexico, is the home of NRAO
operations in New Mexico. Located on the
• The connected radio dishes can act as a campus of New Mexico Tech, the Array
single large-diameter dish with vastly Operations Center houses scientific,
improved angular resolution. engineering, technical, computer and
support staff for both the Very Large Array
and the Very Long Baseline Array.
“
Dreams are often most profound when they
seem the most crazy.

– Sigmund Freud
”
Next time …
Observing the Sky