The Kepler Space Telescope, named for astronomer Johannes Kepler, was NASA's first exoplanet hunting telescope. It launched ...

In the early 1600s, Dutch spectacle maker Jan Lippershey discovered that combining lenses could magnify distant objects. Galileo Galilei quickly improved the designs and became the first to explore ...

When Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei heard rumors of the first practical telescope at the beginning of the 17th century, he was quick to craft his own version and turn it toward the heavens.

While Galileo didn't invent the telescope, he is the person most inextricably tied to its use and development. The field of optics had become so established, and the principles behind Lippershey's ...