Since the dawn of humankind we’ve looked to the stars and wondered, what’s up there? What lies beyond this small blue planet we call home? If only, our ancestors thought, there was a way to bring the night sky closer, to really see the stars. Just how humanity managed to do that is quite a tale. It would take crystals forged inside the Earth, a plant that grows by the sea, a chance alignment of two small pieces of glass, a property boom in New York, and an accident of chemistry and light, to create the device that would reveal the heavens in all their glory: the telescope. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World V: Telescope, BBC 2019
Giant telescopes are being built all over the world which scientists hope will answer some of the oldest and most profound questions humans have ever asked. ibid.
Baghdad (9th century) in this period was like Florence during the Renaissance or Silicon Valley in the age of the Internet. ibid.
The secrets of the spy-glass was unleashed. ibid.
Galileo’s most powerful telescope pushed the limits of our seeing to the moon of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and ultimately to far beyond what had ever been seen with the naked eye. ibid.
Lenses grew bigger and more powerful. ibid.
I think that the event which, more than anything else, led me to the search for ways of making more powerful radio telescopes, was the recognition, in 1952, that the intense source in the constellation of Cygnus was a distant galaxy – 1,000 million light years away. This discovery showed that some galaxies were capable of producing radio emissions about a million times more intense than that from our own Galaxy or the Andromeda nebula, and the mechanisms responsible were quite unknown ... Possibilities were so exciting even in 1952 that my colleagues and I set about the task of designing instruments capable of extending the observations to weaker and weaker sources, and of exploring their internal structure. Martin Ryle
Galileo was the father of modern physics. He was also a man with an extremely abrasive personality. Allan Chapman, Great Scientists: Galileo, Channel 5 2004
The greatest challenge of all came from one man ... Galileo finally put Aristotle to the test. ibid.
Galileo was able to work out a uniform law of acceleration. ibid.
Galileo was living at the height of the Italian Renaissance. ibid.
Galileo refined his telescope. ibid.
Every single one of Galileo’s telescopic discoveries seemed to undermine the accepted view of the universe. ibid.
For a time his book was even banned. ibid.
On the 7th day of January in this present year 1610 at the first hour of night, when I was viewing the heavenly bodies with a telescope, Jupiter presented itself to me. Galileo Galilei
About ten months ago [1609] a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming [Hans Lippershey] had constructed a spyglass, by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby ... Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons gave credence while others denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed to me in a letter from a noble Frenchman at Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to enquire into the means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did shortly afterwards, my basis being the theory of refraction. First I prepared a tube of lead, at the ends of which I fitted two glass lenses, both plane on one side while on the other side one was spherically convex and the other concave. Galileo Galilei
Hubble allows us to peer back to almost the start of Time itself ... When it peered to the very edge of the visible universe it captured these images, and saw that every galaxy glows red. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe: Messengers, BBC 2011
Newton’s telescope is revolutionary because it’s over ten times smaller than the equivalent telescope of the day. These were refracting telescopes. Mystery Files s2e6: Isaac Newton, National Geographic 2011
Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once. Kurt Vonnegut
It will be the mother of all telescopes, and you can bet it will do for astronomy what genome sequencing is doing for biology. The clumsy, if utilitarian, name of this mirrored monster is Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST. You can’t use it yet, but a peak in the Chilean Andes has been decapitated to provide a level spot for placement. Seth Shostak
A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral. Michael Shermer
He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fésolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. John Milton, Paradise Lost
I have tried to improve telescopes and practised continually to see with them. These instruments have play’d me so many tricks that I have at last found them out in many of their humours. Sir William Herschel
I’ve never owned a telescope, but it’s something I’m thinking of looking into. George Carlin, Brain Droppings, 1998
Hubble is fixed beyond our wildest expectations. Dr Edward J Weiler, project chief scientist
Today’s vast and powerful telescopes are taking us on an unimaginable journey to unlock the secrets of the cosmos. They take us back to the dawn of time, to the very birth of the universe. Show us giant clouds where stars and planets are born. Hunting the Edge of Space I, PBS 2010
Revolutions in technology and ever larger telescopes are pushing forward the frontiers of space. ibid.
The journey starts with one man and two pieces of glass. It is the summer of 1609: mathematics professor Galileo Galilei is building his own version of an extraordinary new invention. ibid.
Isaac Newton in creating the first reflector eradicates rainbow colours. ibid.
[William] Herschel makes a catalogue of these mysterious objects. ibid.
Knowledge to him was something sacred and solitary ... He made the world’s first reflecting telescope. Tristram Hunt, Great Britons: Isaac Newton, BBC 2002
In 2011 one of Nasa’s space telescopes, the Wide-Field Infra-Red Survey Explorer [WISE] ... found a series of Brown Dwarfs right in our neighbourhood. The Universe s7e3: Our Place in the Milky Way, History 2012
We’ve never had the technology to see that first part of the story of the universe. Unknown: Comic Time Machine, scientist, Netflix 2023
We’re putting the largest telescope in space a million miles away. ibid.
The James Webb Space Telescope will fundamentally change the way we understand the universe. ibid.
344 single point failures. ibid.
Astronomers have begun one of the most far-reaching efforts ever undertaken to study the universe. They are forging giant news lenses and mirrors while marshalling vast computational power … to peer into the deepest recesses of time. Seeing the Beginning of Time, Amazon 2017
The James Webb Space Telescope is slated for launch in 2018. ibid.