Light and Telescopes

The nature of light

Light is electromagnetic radiation.
Light is made up of very small particles called photons.
Photons are particles, but also have wave properties.

The light we can see with our eyes is referred to visible light. But this
only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Wavelength
One property of any wave is its wavelength. A wavelength is the
distance between successive peaks on a wave.

Energy
Each photon that makes up light carries energy.
The energy of a photon is related to its wavelength.
The shorter the wavelength the more energy the photon has.

Electromagnetic Radiation
Electromagnetic radiation is composed of an oscillating electric and
magnetic field. This gives it its wave nature and allows light to travel
trough empty space.
Light is fastest in a vacuum and travels at 3 x 108 m/s.

Electromagnetic spectrum
There are many different forms of light that make up the
electromagnetic sperctrum.

Doppler shift
The Doppler shift occurs when an object emitting light is moving
toward or away from an observer. When this happens the wavelength
of the light will change.
Blue shift: occurs when the source of light is moving toward an
observer. The wavelength of light will decrease and shift to the blue
end of the spectrum.
Red shift: occurs when the source of light is moving away from an
observer. The wavelength of light will increase and shift to the red
end of the spectrum.

Doppler shift

Doppler shift
The Doppler shift can be used for many things in astronomy.
It can be used to figure out speeds and distances of objects.
It also has given us evidence to support the theory that the universe
is expanding.

Optics and telescopes

Telescope is a device that can gather more light than the human eye
can. More light means that things can be seen more brightly. They can
also be used to magnify objects.
The telescope uses lenses and mirrors and takes advantage of the
principles in optics called reflection and refraction.
There are two kinds of telescopes. A reflecting and a refracting
telescope.

Reflection of a flat mirror

If a light ray hits the surface of a flat mirror it will reflect back with the
same angle it came in with as measured from the normal.

Reflection of a concave mirror

A concave mirror is a curved mirror. All curved mirror have a focal
point. Any incoming parallel light rays will reflect off the mirror and
intersect at the focal point.

Refraction
Refraction is the bending of light rays as it passes through a
transparent material.
The bending of the light takes place at the surface of the material and
occurs due to the change in speed of the light ray.

Refraction due to a flat surface

When light hits a transparent flat surface it can bend toward or away
from a line normal to the surface.
If light slows down it will bend toward the normal, and if it speeds up
it will bend away from the normal.

Convex lens
Is made of curved transparent material.
Curved lenses have a focal point. Any parallel incoming light will
refract and intersect at the focal point and vice-versa.

Reflecting telescope
A reflecting telescope uses a curved mirror (primary) to gather and
focus light onto a flat mirror (secondary) that sends the light to an
eyepiece, which is a convex lens.
The larger the primary mirror the more light it can collect. Thereby
being able to see dimer object.
A larger primary mirror will also give better resolution, so objects can
be seen with greater detail.
The lens in the eyepiece can be used to magnify the image of the
object being observed.

Refracting telescope
A refracting telescope basically consists of two lenses.
A large, long-focal-length lens (objective) that collects and focuses
light. And a small, short-focal-length lens (eyepiece) that straightens
the light rays.

The eyepiece lens also magnifies the image of the object.

Refracting telescope

Capturing nonvisible light

The telescopes that we use to see objects with our eye are very
limited because the light that is visible to our eyes is only a very small
part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
With todays technology we are able to make devices that can detect
the other forms of light that we cant see with our eyes.
This has allowed us to see things that are invisible to the naked eye.

Visible vs infrared image

Blackbody radiation
A blackbody is a hypothetical object that absorbs all electromagnetic
radiation that hits it.
A star for example is close to being a blackbody.
Most of the light a blackbody radiates is related to its temperature.
The hotter the object the shorter the wavelength of light it gives off.

Color of starts
Since stars are close to being blackbodies, the hotter the star the
shorter the wavelength of light it will give off.
So a star that looks blue is hotter than a star that is red.