35 Interesting Facts About Telescopes

21-25 Telescope Facts

21. Vatican state owns a observatory telescope in south-west Arizona. – Source

22. Neptune was the first planet to get its existence predicted by calculations before it was actually seen by a telescope. – Source

23. The hottest place in the universe is a cluster of galaxies called RXJ1347; it was discovered in 2009 by the Japanese telescope Suzaku and has a constant temperature of 300 million Celsius degrees. – Source

24. The military found two Hubble-Class space telescopes they had basically forgotten about and had in storage. They donated them to NASA minus some undisclosed advanced attachments. They were more advanced that Hubble and had never been used. – Source

25. NASA plans to build a Radio Telescope on the far side of the Moon by the 2030s. – Source

26-30 Telescope Facts

26. There’s a telescope facility in Chile called the Very Large Telescope. It is very large. – Source

27. A new radio telescope being built in Australia and South Africa will generate so much data about space that it will exceed global internet traffic by a large margin. An exabyte per day of raw data, which could be compressed to around 10 petabytes. – Source

28. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank was subtly turned towards the Soviet Union as it was the only telescope in the world capable of providing early warning of an impending strike. – Source

29. In 2009 a space enthusiast with a ten inch consumer level telescope took photos of the ISS as it passed overhead. An astronaut in a spacesuit working on the station is discernable in the shot. – Source

30. There is a town in West Virginia where, due to the presence of a high-tech government telescope, all phones and WiFi are illegal. – Source

31-35 Telescope Facts

31. The initial launch of the Hubble Space Telescope was seen as a complete failure due to faulty optics and other instruments. This billion dollar mistake threatened to mark the end of NASA. It wasn’t until 3 years later that STS-61 was able to repair it thus saving the space agency. – Source

32. Liquid Mirror Telescopes use a highly reflective liquid like mercury that is rotated so that the centrifugal force creates a near perfect parabola. It is super cheap in comparison to traditional mirrors and Large Zenith Telescope is the largest in the world with 30 liters of mercury. – Source

33. In the 1600s French astronomer, Adrien Auzout once considered building a telescope 1,000 ft long. He thought the magnification would allow him to see animals on the moon. – Source

34. Galileo was the first person to see Saturn’s rings but his telescope was of poor quality and described them as ears hanging off the sides of the planet as he didn’t realize they were rings. – Source

35. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Telescope discovered a galaxy that shouldn’t exist under today’s scientific laws. – Source