Building a Space Telescope
Unit 2 Lesson 4

What is this all about?
In Unit 2 we are working with project design
So far we have
Worked with the Critical Path Method (CPM)
You have designed a bicycle cart
Discovered information on Communications Satellites as well as the GPS system
Now we are going to work with Space Telescopes

What is a telescope
A telescope is a light bucket
What that means is that telescopes collect energy.
Although that energy could be in the form of visible light, it could actually be energy from any part of the electromagnetic spectrum
Telescopes focus the energy and send it into instruments or an eyepiece so that the energy can be viewed or turned into data

How do they work
A telescope collects energy (it tries to fill up its bucket with energy)
In most cases the energy is so weak it must be focused to pick up as much energy as possible from a large area into a small area
The weaker the signal the bigger the dish or mirror you will need

A piece of trivia
There was a movie titled Contact with Jodi Foster. You can find clips on the internet.
In the movie the Earth receives a transmission from a far off galaxy
I had dinner with the math advisor to the movie and his wife was the physics advisor
He told me that to be able to receive that message from so far way, the signal would have been so weak, that the dish for the antenna would have needed to be the size of the Sun.

Why put a telescope in space?
Energy can be absorbed or reflected
When energy from space travels through the atmosphere many types of energy are absorbed such as ultraviolet, infrared, radio
You can see what does and does not reach the surface of the Earth by looking at this website
So, if you want to study the energy that does not reach the Earth, you have to go above the atmosphere

In this Unit
James Webb Space Telescope
conceptual design
www.jwst.nasa.gov
In this unit you will be looking at what a space telescope is and what it can do
You will be designing your own space telescope
Good Luck

NASASpace Telescope Science Institute
Photo Credits