Eli5 Space Telescopes

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I know they help us see further away but I just can’t picture in my head how they work.

Especially when people talk about building bigger to look at galaxies 8 plus billion light years away, surely we’re not looking that far distance wise we’re just catching the light at the telescope so if the light has taken that long and traveled to us surely it’s just as close now as the light from our sun that took 8 minutes so wouldn’t a pair on binoculars work just as well?

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Telescopes just collect and focus light from distant objects. When objects emit light, that light spreads out as it travels further away from the object. That, coupled with the fact that objects appear smaller the farther away they are, means we can’t see a lot of distant objects with our naked eye. Telescopes use lenses and/or mirrors to collect more light than we can see with our eyes and to make the objects appear larger so we can see them.

I have no idea what you’re saying in that paragraph because it’s one giant run-on sentence and I can’t decipher it. If you’d like to try and fix that, I’ll be happy to address what you said there.

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