Chapter 5

Telescopes

5.1 Introduction
Telescopes are the workhorses of modern astrophysics. Advances in our understanding have
come as they have become larger allowing us to reach fainter and fainter objects. The current
world-leading ground-based telescopes have 8 m to 10 m diameter mirrors; construction has
started on the telescopes in the 30 m to 40 m class. Telescopes have two essential features:
they collect more light than the naked eye, and they allow finer details to be resolved.

5.2 Cameras
When taking images of the sky, most telescopes operate e↵ectively as cameras, as illustrated
in Fig. 5.1. Light rays from a point source spread out as they get further from the source,
but given the distances of celestial sources, the light rays at Earth are very near parallel to
each other as drawn in Fig. 5.1 where they come in from the left. A lens brings parallel rays
together at its focus, a distance f , the focal length from the lens. The ray going through
the centre of the lens is not deviated in direction. The figure illustrates rays coming from two
distinct points on the sky, two stars for instance, separated by angle ↵ radians. A detector of
some sort, in the old days a photographic plate, nowadays a digital detector such as a CCD, is
placed at the focus. The two points on the sky are imaged to two points on the detector. By
the small angle approximation the separation of the two points separated by angle ↵ radians

l
D

f
Figure 5.1: A basic camera. The first lens (the only one as drawn) is the objective lens. Its
diameter D and focal length f are important parameters.

26
CHAPTER 5. TELESCOPES 27

on the sky is
` = f ↵. (5.1)

5.2.1 Imaging extended objects

In astronomy an “extended” object is one that is resolved, such as the Sun, Moon or a galaxy.
We then define a quantity called surface brightness, SB as the flux at Earth from the object per
unit solid angle (steradian) of sky. The whole sky covers 4⇡ steradians; a small square patch
of sky ↵ radians on each side subtends a solid angle of ↵2 steradians. With this definition, the
amount of power a telescope with objective diameter D receives from a square patch of sky ↵
radians on a side and surface brightness SB is
⇡D2
SB ↵ 2 . (5.2)
4
This is imaged onto the detector into a square of f ↵ on a side, hence area f 2 ↵2 . Therefore
the power per unit area of detector will be given by
⇡D2 SB ↵2 ⇡SB
= . (5.3)
4f 2 ↵2 4(f /D)2
SB is set by the object, and is out of our hands. The quantity f /D, the ration of the focal
length to the diameter of the lens is known as its “focal ratio” or f -ratio and is usually
written as e.g. “f/8” for f /D = 8. The f -ratio is the key factor which determines the length
of exposure needed when taking astronomical images, or indeed images with any camera.
Slightly surprisingly perhaps, it scales not simply with D rather the ratio f /D, any thus one
gets the same power per unit area of a detector from the tiny cameras in smartphones (typical
f-ratios f/2.0 to f/2.4) as from some monster D = 10 m telescope of the same f -ratio. The
di↵erence is that the actual area of detector would be much larger so much more power would
have been gathered and the telescope could reveal much finer detail. Small f -ratio optics are
hard and expensive to make as aberrations of the lenses are much harder to correct.

5.2.2 The di↵raction limit

A key property of any optical system is its resolution. For astronomical telescopes, it is angular
resolution that counts, i.e. the smallest angle between two stars where one can still distinguish
them as two rather than a merged single star. While poor optics can always means poor
resolution, there is an ultimate limit set by the di↵raction of light as it comes through the
objective. The act of defining a circular path diameter D of wavefront leading to a spreading
out of the direction of the light and thus a minimum resolvable angle given by

↵min = 1.22 , (5.4)

D
where is the wavelength of the light. It is important to emphasize that this is the best that
one can do, and poor design or construction can always lead to a worse (larger ↵min ) for a
given system. The 1.22 is a factor arising from the circular nature of lenses and would not
appear were the lens square-shaped with side D.
Example 5.1. What is the angular resolution of the human eye?
CHAPTER 5. TELESCOPES 28

Answer. Under dark conditions, the pupil of the eye can expand to D = 5 mm. Assuming
a visual wavelength of = 500 nm, close to the peak response of the eye,
7
1.22 ⇥ 5 ⇥ 10
↵min = = 1.22 ⇥ 10 4
rad = 2500 . (5.5)
5 ⇥ 10 3
This is rather better than the 10 = 6000 I quoted before, but the human eye does not really
make full use of the largest possible pupil diameter which is more about picking up signs
of danger in the dark than worrying too much about what exactly it looks like, so the
larger value is more realistic. First of all the density of receptors (specifically cones) in
the fovea is not really high enough to exploit the di↵raction limit, and the eye’s optics are
not often perfect.

Example 5.2. What is the di↵raction limit of a D = 8 m aperture telescope?

Answer. The largest operating optical telescopes in the world have diameters around 8 m,
although 30 m to 40 m telescopes are now under constructiona . Again setting = 500 nm,
7
1.22 ⇥ 5 ⇥ 10
↵min = = 7.625 ⇥ 10 8
rad = 0.01600 . (5.6)
8
a
See the European Extremely Large Telescope

5.2.3 Ground-based versus space-based telescopes

I quoted values of around 0.500 to 1.000 for the resolution limit set by the atmosphere (at good
sites: it would typically be more like 200 to 400 in the UK). Astronomers call this the “seeing”
and it is as important as the typical amount of clouds in selecting observing sites. Thus the
0.01600 just derived for an 8 m telescope is very much a theoretical optimum. The di↵raction
limit can be reached in space however, and this is one of several major advantages of observing
from space, o↵set of course by the much higher economic costs. The Hubble Space Telescope
(HST ) has an aperture of D = 2.4 m, and thus a di↵raction limit of 0.0500 from a similar
calculation to the example. This is a great advantage when detecting faint objects because
compared to 0.500 for a good ground-based site, this is a factor of 10 better resolution and
thus the flux from a faint point source would be concentrated into 100x smaller detector area
than on a ground-based telescope. This can more than make up for the (8/2.4)2 = 11 times
larger amount of power gathered by a large ground-based telescope.
In recent decades there have been significant advances in “adaptive optics”, a technique
in which deformable mirrors are used to counteract the distortions of the atmosphere, mea-
sured using multiple lasers. Such techniques will be crucial to the operation of the new large
telescopes. The e↵ects of the atmosphere are very wavelength-dependent, and much less sig-
nificant at radio wavelengths. In addition there are techniques that allow widely-spaced radio
telescopes to be combined to e↵ectively have an aperture, as far as the di↵raction limit is con-
cerned, comparable to their separation. Thus it is that in 2019 an image of the black-hole in the
nearby galaxy M87 was created, a technical tour-de-force in which radio waves of wavelength
= 1.3 mm were used by a set of telescopes spread across the globe (so D ⇡ 12 000 km) to
form an image with a resolution of around 0.000 00300 , or 30 microarcseconds.
CHAPTER 5. TELESCOPES 29

f1 f2 2
1

Figure 5.2: A telescope in a configuration used for observing by eye.

5.3 Visual observing

As I indicated earlier, most modern telescopes operate essentially as large cameras. There is
still a role for visual observing however, and amateur astronomers still discover many comets
and supernovae. When used for visual observing, an extra lens, the “eyepiece” is added, which
can be considered to be a magnifying glass looking at the image formed by the objective.
This configuration is shown in Fig. 5.2. In the configuration shown, the light goes in parallel
and emerges parallel, only for the eye (in camera mode, and positioned to the right of the
eyepiece) to form an image on its retina. The key property of the telescope in this form is
that it provides angular magnification. A simple relation for this is easily worked out using the
small angle approximation and considering the length ` between the two images of the two
stars formed at the focus of the objective which act as the source of light for the eyepiece
Studying the figure, the long thin triangle of opening angle ↵1 (apex at the objective) and the
equivalent one of opening angle ↵2 with apex at the eyepiece, one deduces

` = f1 ↵1 = f2 ↵2 , (5.7)

hence the angular magnification

↵2 f1
M= = . (5.8)
↵1 f2
Focussing on the set of blue rays in the figure, one can also see from similar triangles that
the diameter of the beam out of the eyepiece is given by
f2 D
De = D= . (5.9)
f1 M
Binoculars, which are essentially telescopes acting like Fig. 5.2 but with some prism to
fold the light path and shorten the structure, are often described by a pair of numbers like
“10x50” or “8x40”. The first number is the magnification, while the second is the diameter
of the objective in millimetres. Thus 10x50 binoculars have an angular magnification of 10.
The Moon would subtend around 5° through such binoculars, and appear 10x closer. If you
have never looked at the Moon through binoculars, please do. Especially around half Moon,
it can be a beautiful sight. With a 50 mm objective, the bundle of rays coming out will have
a diameter of 50/10 = 5 mm, matching the fully opened pupil of the eye. The eyepiece lens
would need to have at least this diameter to avoid losing light for objects directly on the
telescope axis, and even larger still to avoid losing light for stars just o↵ the axis as indicated
by the red bundle of rays.
Here are two examples illustrating features of telescopes.
CHAPTER 5. TELESCOPES 30

Example 5.3. A telescope is described as “an f/10 10-inch, with a 15-mm eyepiece, having
a 60° apparent field-of-view”. What is its magnification, angular resolution and true field of
view?

Answer. “10 inch” is the diameter of the objective (lots of US telescope makers, so
imperial units are not uncommon), so D = 0.25 m. “f/10” is the f -ratio, so the focal
length f1 = 2.5 m. “15 mm” is the eyepiece focal length, so f2 = 15 mm. Hence the
magnification
f1 2500
M= = = 167. (5.10)
f2 15
The angular resolution set by the objective = 1.22 /D1 , which, assuming = 500 nm,
gives ↵1,min = 0.500 . This is magnified to 8400 as seen by the eye, which is a reasonable
match to the resolution of the eye (6000 ). If a lower magnification was used, the eye will
set the limiting magnification of the system. A higher magnification would lose field of
view. Finally the true field of view is given by 60°/167 = 210 , about two-thirds the angular
diameter of the Moon. Note that the angular resolution 0.500 is similar to the best limit
set by the atmosphere, so more often than not, it will be the atmosphere that actually
sets the limit.

Example 5.4. How faint a star could one see by eye through a 0.5 m telescope?

Answer. This is a matter of light gathering power. When viewing faint stars, the pupil
of the eye expands to its maximum of 5 mm. The telescope aperture is 500 mm, so it
gathers 104 times more flux, corresponding to a gain of 2.5 log10 (104 ) = 10 magnitudes.
The faintest we can see without a telescope is ⇡ 6, so with the telescope one could stars
as faint as m = 16.