Liverpool Telescope Design

Telescopes work by collecting light from as large an area as possible and focusing it down to a single point. In this way we can see more detail and fainter objects.

The first telescopes collected and focused the light using lenses much like a camera, but modern astronomical telescopes use very large curved mirrors since these give better images.

You can see how the light travels from the stars into the telescope and finally to a point, called a focus, by looking at this ray diagram.

Here are some interesting questions for you . . .