Who Invented the Radio Telescopes

Telescopes help us to see far distances. The first telescope was invented in the early 1600s. Before that people had to rely on naked eyes. People with sharp eyes would be able to give more information on what they could see at a far distance. But once the telescope was invented, it was immediately adopted by the mariners, travelers and the members of the military. They were soon put to scientific use. But before we delve into the details of who invented the radio telescope we should educate ourselves on the different types of telescopes.

Telescopes can be divided into two main categories. The first being the optical telescopes and the second being the radio telescopes. The optical telescopes are of two types namely refractor and reflector. The first refracting telescope was invented by Hans Lippershey in 1608. Lippershey was a German-born Dutch lens maker who intended to use his refracting telescope as a military device. Galileo Galilei after studying Lippershey’s refracting telescope was the first to use this telescope for the study of the stars and the planets in 1609.Reflector telescopes were invented by Isaac Newton and because of this they are also known as Newtonian telescopes. Now the question arises on what is a radio telescope and who invented the radio telescopes?

A radio telescope is a parabolic (dish-shaped) antenna that gathers radio waves from space that has been emitted from radio sources. Radio telescopes commonly come in large clusters or arrays. Radio telescopes need to be big for two reasons. The first reason is that there isn’t much radio radiation reaching the Earth, so big reflectors will capture more light. The second reason is the large wavelength of radio waves. To resolve closely spaced sources, the radio dish needs to be very large. One alternative to building very large radio telescopes is to build arrays of telescopes.

Radio telescope was first invented by Karl Gothe Jansky (1905-1949) who was an American radio engineer to pioneer and develop radio astronomy. In 1932 he detected the first radio waves from a cosmic source – in the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy. Grote Reber (1911-2002) a ham radio operator made the first true radio telescope using a 32 feet diameter parabolic dish to focus the radio waves after reading Jansky’s discoveries. In 1937, Grote Reber, the man who invented the radio telescope, made the first array of radio telescopes by building a 9- meter parabolic reflector dish radio antenna in his yard in Illinois which was the first radio telescope used for astronomy. He detected the first signals at a frequency of 160 megahertz, about 2m wavelength in 1939, using his third receiver.

Reber’s work led to many developments in radio astronomy. He made the first radio maps of the sky and showed that the brightest area corresponded to the center of the Milky Way. A radio telescope is a metal dish that gathers radio waves from space. Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation with long wavelengths and relative low energy. One example is Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. Other very well known radio telescopes are Keck telescopes Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii’s, Chara Array at Georgia state university, The Hubble space telescope located in the space etc. Radio telescopes are primarily used for astronomy and also have military applications.

6ghz radio telescope