The Top 10 Telescopes of All Time

A look back at the 400-year-old art of assisted sky-gazing

Humans have been looking to the heavens for as long as we have had stories to tell about them. But the way we look up has come quite far in the past 400 years, since Galileo Galilei first pointed a spyglass to the sky.

In honor of the 400th anniversary of the telescope, Popular Science looks back on the top 10 observatories on Earth and beyond.

 

More deals, reviews, and buying guides

 
Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about astronomy, zoonoses and everything in between. She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and her work regularly appears in Popular Science, New Scientist, FiveThirtyEight, Wired, and many other publications for adults and kids. Rebecca grew up in Colorado, a mile closer to space, and now lives in St. Louis, near the confluence of the continent's two mightiest rivers.