This is part of the Endeavour class with Blended schools and VLINC.

1. BUILDING A SPACE TELESCOPE
Unit 2 Lesson 4

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

7. In this Unit
JamesWebb SpaceTelescope
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

8. NASA
SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE
INSTITUTE
Photo Credits