Related papers: A very, very peculiar telescope of the 1610s
Several early spyglasses are depicted in five paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder completed between 1608 and 1625, as he was court painter of Archduke Albert VII of Habsburg. An optical tube that appears in the Extensive Landscape with View…
We have investigated the nature and the origin of the telescopes depicted in three paintings of J. Bruegel the Elder completed between 1609 and 1618. The "tube" that appears in the painting dated 1608-1612 represents a very early dutch…
Ancient instruments of high interest for research on the origin and diffusion of early scientific devices in the late XVI - early XVII centuries are reproduced in three paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder. We investigated the nature and the…
In the later stages of his life, Christiaan Huygens semi-empirically derived a set of relations between the objective focus and diameter, the eyepiece focus, and the magnification that resulted from combining the two lenses. These relations…
What are the historical evidence concerning the turning of the spyglass into an astronomical instrument, the telescope? In Sidereus Nuncius and in his private correspondence Galileo tells the reader what he did with the telescope, but he…
Unusual features of water waves that Galileo described in a letter to Cardinal Orsini in 1616 are revisited from the perspectives of singular optics and geometric analysis.
This article is a partly pedagogical, partly historical and partly technical review of special relativity and its experimental foundations, in honor of the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.
In nature there are various pairs of observed phenomena and observing scientific techniques which are elegantly coupled with each other. A very general and well known example is the fact that the metal we use to build telescopes were once…
In the 20th century, quantum mechanics connected the particle and wave concepts of light and thereby made mechanisms accessible that had never been imagined before. Processes such as stimulated emission and quantum entanglement have…
In the late 1620s the Neapolitan telescope maker Francesco Fontana was the first to observe the sky using a telescope with two convex lenses, which he had manufactured himself. Fontana succeeded in drawing the most accurate maps of the…
In this short note we discuss the case of the thought experiments on water-filled telescopes and their realizations during 18th and 19th century. The story of those instruments shows that the scientific progress occurs in a curious way,…
Scientific illustrations, thanks to the vision of great artists fascinated by astronomical research and astronautics, have provided us with an accurate depiction of the possible views which mankind will one day observed from locations other…
It is shown as experiments and theories about the nature of light led to the special theory of relativity. The most important facts for the emergence of the theory proposed by Einstein in 1905 are presented.
When visiting the Museum of Modern Art's special exhibit ''van Gogh and the Colors of the Night (New York, USA, 2008)'' I was impressed by the artist's effort to paint and write about landscapes and life scenes at night. At the same time a…
For several decades a portrait of Johannes Kepler has been widely circulating among professional astronomers, scientific and academic institutions, and the general public. Despite its provenance and identification having been questioned in…
The Talbot effect, also referred to as self-imaging or lensless imaging, was originally discovered in the 1830's by Henry Fox Talbot. Over the years, various investigators have found different aspects of this phenomenon, and a theory of the…
The Sun has been observed through a telescope for four centuries. However, its study made a prodigious leap at the end of the nineteenth century with the appearance of photography and spectroscopy, then at the beginning of the following…
Most major discoveries in astronomy are unplanned, and result from surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. For example, of the 10 greatest discoveries…
The thought experiment (called the clock paradox or the twin paradox)proposed by Langevin in 1911 of two observers, one staying on Earth and the other making a trip toward a star with a velocity near the light velocity is very well known…
The Hubble Space Telescope's mission is summarized, with special emphasis placed on the Space Telescope Science Institute's unique experience with Hubble's behavior as an astronomical telescope in the environment of low earth orbit for over…