Optical Telescopes

As time passed since the first telescope, technology advanced to allow people to look clearer and farther into the skies. Optical telescopes gather light from the visible spectrum through either lenses or mirrors. Observatories make use of areas of high elevation far from city lights in order to best view and research elements of space. The Hubble telescope, however, is an observatory that does not sit on Earth. Rather, it transmits images to Earth from its orbit in space.