Reference Terms
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Telescope
A telescope is an instrument designed for the observation of remote objects. The term usually refers to optical telescopes, but there are telescopes for most of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and for other signal types.
An optical telescope gathers and focuses visible light and other electromagnetic radiation. Telescopes increase the apparent angular size of distant objects, as well as their apparent brightness. Telescopes work by employing one or more curved optical elements - lenses or mirrors - to gather light or other electromagnetic radiation and bring that light or radiation to a focus, where the image can be observed, photographed or studied. Optical telescopes are used for astronomy and in many non-astronomical instruments including theodolites, transits, spotting scopes, monoculars, binoculars, camera lenses and spyglasses.
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Space & Time News
August 26, 2026
Aug. 26, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is now enclosed inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and nearly ready for launch. Its mission could uncover thousands of exoplanets while helping scientists investigate dark matter, dark energy, and the accelerating ...
Aug. 24, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has been cleared for final launch preparations ahead of a targeted August 30 liftoff aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. The powerful new observatory will probe cosmic expansion, the history of the universe, and distant ...
Aug. 20, 2026 A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 stage crashed into the Moon on Aug. 5, leaving behind a newly formed crater about 60 feet wide. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured detailed images showing bright and dark streaks of debris blasted across the ...
Aug. 12, 2026 Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they ...
Aug. 11, 2026 NASA is assembling the foundations of a future Moon Base through a wave of robotic missions and powerful new commercial landers. More than 20 landings are planned through 2029, testing everything from precision landings and lunar communications to ...
Aug. 10, 2026 NASA engineers have found a clever way to squeeze more life out of Voyager 2, nearly half a century after it left Earth. In an operation nicknamed the “Big Bang,” the team simultaneously shut down certain power-hungry hardware and switched to ...
Aug. 7, 2026 A ten-month Antarctic experiment found that astronauts may struggle not only with loneliness but also with spending too much time around the same people. Frequent contact was linked to greater ...
Aug. 7, 2026 Metal-rich asteroids could one day become hardware stores for Mars, supplying the materials needed to build and repair a growing colony. A new analysis shows that carefully selected asteroids may be reachable with current spacecraft technology. Some ...
July 31, 2026 Scientists have built the first all-optical photonic time crystal, allowing them to reshape the behavior of terahertz light at extraordinary speeds. The breakthrough could open the door to ultrafast computing, smarter communication systems, advanced ...
July 30, 2026 Astronomers may have been listening for alien civilizations in only a small slice of the radio spectrum while overlooking a largely unexplored range of higher frequencies. Using archived data from the ALMA telescope in Chile, researchers conducted ...
July 28, 2026 NASA’s Psyche spacecraft aced its Mars flyby, using the planet’s gravity to speed toward its 2029 encounter with a metal-rich asteroid. The spacecraft tested its cameras, magnetometer, and ...
July 23, 2026 NASA is preparing for future astronaut landings on the Moon with an unusually ambitious orbital rehearsal. During Artemis III in 2027, Orion astronauts will rendezvous and dock separately with ...
Latest Headlines
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Aug. 26, 2026 A single asteroid impact may explain two of Deimos’s most puzzling features: its huge southern depression and unusually smooth, dusty surface. Simulations suggest a roughly 320-meter asteroid ...
Aug. 25, 2026 NASA scientists found that microbes brought by astronauts could survive in cold, shadowed niches around the Moon’s South Pole, potentially complicating future searches for pristine lunar chemistry. ...
Aug. 24, 2026 A massive test of gravity across the cosmos found that it behaves almost exactly as Newton and Einstein predicted, even across galaxy clusters hundreds of millions of light-years apart. The result ...
Aug. 24, 2026 A faint ribbon of stars around a distant galaxy has become the first globular cluster stellar stream ever identified beyond the Milky Way. Because the stars trace the galaxy’s gravity, researchers ...
Aug. 24, 2026 The Artemis II crew will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor after becoming the first humans in more than 50 years to travel beyond the Moon. Their 10-day Orion mission also carried them ...
Aug. 23, 2026 Researchers at CERN have created microscopic versions of the early Universe by colliding surprisingly small atomic nuclei at nearly the speed of ...
Aug. 23, 2026 Astronomers have found stars that repeatedly skim past supermassive black holes, surviving each encounter while producing a new burst of light. In some systems, those flares mysteriously fade with ...
Aug. 22, 2026 Astronomers using JWST have discovered that massive early galaxies contain far more small, faint stars than expected. That hidden population could make some of these galaxies three to four times more ...
Aug. 21, 2026 For decades, scientists have puzzled over why certain atomic nuclei unexpectedly produce large numbers of low-energy gamma rays. A new experiment traced the effect to magnetic changes inside the ...
Aug. 20, 2026 Extreme experiments have revealed how diamond behaves at crushing pressures beyond those inside Neptune and Uranus, resolving a decades-old conflict ...