|
Galileo was actually a master optician of his time. Particularly considering the glass of the period was so poor. He made about 100 telescopes of which about 10 were good enough for astronomical observation. He ground all the lenses himself.
I believe he discovered the Galilean satellites of Jupiter with an objective of about 35mm stopped down to 15mm and a simple eyepiece (single concave lengs) providing a magnification of about 30x.
I believe most (if not all) of his telescopes had plano-convex primaries which are flat on one side and convex on the other.
With these instruments he discovered moons orbiting Jupiter, the phases of Venus, realized the Milky Way was composed of many faint stairs and saw the rings of Saturn (though he described them as "handles").
Many others tried to make telescopes but Galileo was the master in his time.
Have fun,
Doug
|