Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A light, cheap space telescope design would make it possible to put many individual units in space at once. Katie Yung, Daniel ...

For hundreds of years, the principle behind the telescope has been as simple as it gets: build a lens or mirror to collect a large amount of light, focus that light onto a detector (like an eye, a ...

Modern-age telescopes have offered us a tantalizing view of what lies in the vast expanse of space, while also giving us glimpses of the universe’s past. However, making telescopes that can peek deep ...

Astronomers at Macquarie University have pioneered a new technique for observing celestial objects during the day, potentially allowing around-the-clock visual monitoring of satellites and greatly ...

For centuries, lenses have worked the same way: curved glass or plastic bending light to bring images into focus. But traditional lenses have a major drawback—the more powerful they need to be, the ...

Telescopes keep getting bigger — and more expensive. But what if there were a better way? One astronomer has suggested a possible work-around: Turn the entire Earth into a telescope lens by using the ...

Current technology has given us breathtaking imagery, but to detect what’s hiding in deep space, telescopes are very limited. Although manned space exploration to distant worlds is figuratively ...

Our proposed telescope, the Nautilus Space Observatory, would replace large, heavy mirrors with a novel, thin lens that is much lighter, cheaper and easier to produce than mirrored telescopes. Because ...

Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life. To find the answer, astronomers will ...