Timeline of telescopes, observatories, and observing technology.
Before the Common Era (BCE)
1900s BCE Taosi Astronomical Observatory, Xiangfen County, Linfen City, Shanxi Province, China
1500s BCE Shadow clocks invented in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia
600s BCE 11th–7th century BCE, Zhou dynasty astronomical observatory (灵台) in Fenghao (today's Xi'an), China
200s BCE Thirteen Towers solar observatory, Chankillo, Peru Antikythera Mechanism, a geared astronomical computer that calculates lunar and solar eclipses, the position of the Sun and the Moon the lunar phase (age of the Moon as seen from Earth), has several lunisolar calendars, including the Olympic Games calendar. It is at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece.
100s BCE 220-206 BCE, Han dynasty astronomical observatory (灵台) in Chang'an and Luoyang. During East Han dynasty, astronomical observatory (灵台) built in Yanshi, Henan Province, China 220-150 BCE, Astrolabe invented by Apollonius of Perga
Common Era (CE)
400s 5th century – Observatory at Ujjain, India
600s 632–647 – Cheomseongdae observatory is built in the reign of Queen Seondeok at Gyeongju, then the capital of Silla (present day South Korea) 618–1279 – Tang dynasty-Song dynasty, observatories built in Chang'an, Kaifeng, Hangzhou, China
700s 700–96 – Brass astrolabe constructed by Muhammad al-Fazari based on Hellenistic sources
800s 9th century – quadrant invented by Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī in 9th century Baghdad and is used for astronomical calculations 800–33 – The first modern observatory research institute built in Baghdad, Iraq, by Arabic astronomers during time of Al-Mamun 825–35 – Al-Shammisiyyah observatory by Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi in Baghdad, Iraq
900s 10th century – Large astrolabe of diameter 1.4 meters constructed by Ibn Yunus 994 – First sextant constructed in Ray, Iran, by Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi. It was a very large mural sextant that achieved a high level of accuracy for astronomical measurements.
1000s 1000 – Mokattam observatory in Egypt for Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah 11th century – Planisphere invented by Biruni 11th century – Universal latitude-independent astrolabe invented by Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel) 1023 – Hamedan observatory in Persia c. 1030 – Treasury of Optics by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) of Iraq and Egypt 1074–92 – Malikshah Observatory at Isfahan used by Omar Khayyám
1100s 1100–50 – Jabir ibn Aflah develops instruments resembling and perhaps inspiring the torquetum, an observational instrument and mechanical analog computer device 1119–25 – Cairo al-Bataihi observatory for Al-Afdal Shahanshah
1200s 1259 – Maragheh observatory and library of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi built in Persia under Hulagu Khan c. 1270 – Terrace for Managing Heaven 26 observatory network of Guo Shoujing under Khubilai Khan 1276 – Dengfeng Star Observatory Platform, Gaocheng, Dengfeng City, Henan Province, China
1300s 1371 – The idea of using hours of equal time length throughout the year in a sundial was the innovation of Ibn al-Shatir
1400s 1420 – Samarkand observatory of Ulugh Beg 1437 - Zij-i Sultani is published, the first star catalog since the Almagest 1442 – Beijing Ancient Observatory in China 1467–71 – Observatory at Nagyvarad Oradea, Kingdom of Hungary for Matthias Corvinus. Tabula Varadensis. 1472 – The Nuremberg observatory of Regiomontanus and Bernhard Walther.
1500s 1560 – Kassel observatory under Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hesse 1575–80 – Constantinople Observatory of Taqi ad-Din under Sultan Murad III 1576 – Royal Danish Astronomical Observatory Uraniborg at Ven by Tycho Brahe 1577–80 – Taqi al-Din invents a mechanical astronomical clock that measures time in seconds, one of the most important innovations in 16th-century practical astronomy, as previous clocks were not accurate enough to be used for astronomical purposes. 1577–80 – Taqi al-Din invents framed sextant 1581 – Royal Danish Astronomical Observatory Stjärneborg at Ven by Tycho Brahe
1600s 1600 – Prague observatory in Benátky nad Jizerou by Tycho Brahe 1603 – Johann Bayer's Uranometria is published 1608 – Hans Lippershey tries to patent an optical refracting telescope, the first recorded functional telescope 1609 – Galileo Galilei builds his first optical refracting telescope 1616 – Niccolò Zucchi experiments with a reflecting telescope 1633 – Construction of Leiden University Observatory 1641 – William Gascoigne invents telescope cross hairs 1641 – Danzig/Gdansk observatory of Jan Hevelius 1642 – Copenhagen University Royal observatory 1661 – James Gregory proposes an optical reflecting telescope with parabolic mirrors 1667 – Paris Observatory 1668 – Isaac Newton constructs the first "practical" reflecting telescope, the Newtonian telescope 1672 – Laurent Cassegrain designs the Cassegrain telescope 1675 – Royal Greenwich Observatory of England 1684 – Christiaan Huygens publishes "Astroscopia Compendiaria" in which he described the design of very long aerial telescopes
1700s 1704 – First observatory at Cambridge University (based at Trinity College) 1724 – Indian observatory of Sawai Jai Singh at Delhi 1725 – St. Petersburg observatory at Royal Academy 1732 – Indian observatories of Sawai Jai Singh at Varanasi, Ujjain, Mathura, Madras 1733 – Chester Moore Hall invents the achromatic lens refracting telescope 1734 – Indian observatory of Sawai Jai Singh at Jaipur 1753 – Real Observatorio de Cádiz (Spain) 1753 – Vilnius Observatory at Vilnius University, Lithuania 1758 – John Dollond reinvents the achromatic lens 1761 – Joseph-Nicolas Delisle 62 observing station network for observing the transit of Venus 1769 – Short reflectors used at 63 station network for transit of Venus 1774 – Vatican Observatory (Specola Vaticana), originally established as the Observatory of the Roman College. 1780 – Florence Specola observatory 1789 – William Herschel finishes a 49-inch (1.2 m) optical reflecting telescope, located in Slough, England 1798 – Real Observatorio de la Isla de Léon (actualmente Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada) (Spain)
1800s 1803 National Astronomical Observatory (Colombia), the first observatory in the Americas 1836 Swathithirunal opened Trivandrum observatory 1839 Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (inventor of the daguerreotype photographic process) attempts to photograph the moon. Tracking errors in guiding the telescope during the long exposure made the photograph came out as an indistinct fuzzy spot 1840 – John William Draper takes make a successful photographic image of the Moon, the first astronomical photograph 1845 – Lord Rosse finishes the Birr Castle 72-inch (1.8 m) optical reflecting telescope, located in Parsonstown, Ireland 1849 – Santiago observatory set up by USA, later becomes Chilean National Observatory (now part of the University of Chile) 1859 – Kirchhoff and Bunsen develop spectroscopy 1864 – Herschel's so-called GC (General Catalogue) of nebulae and star clusters published 1868 – Janssen and Lockyer discover Helium observing spectra of the Sun 1871 – German Astronomical Association organized network of 13 (later 16) observatories for stellar proper motion studies 1863 – William Allen Miller and Sir William Huggins use the photographic wet collodion plate process to obtain the first ever photographic spectrogram of a star, Sirius and Capella. 1872 – Henry Draper photographs a spectrum of Vega that shows absorption lines. 1878 – Dreyer published a supplement to the GC of about 1000 new objects, the New General Catalogue 1883 – Andrew Ainslie Common uses the photographic dry plate process and a 36-inch (91 cm) reflecting telescope in his backyard to record 60 minute exposures of the Orion Nebula that for the first time showed stars too faint to be seen by the human eye. 1887 – Paris conference institutes Carte du Ciel project to map entire sky to 14th magnitude photographically 1888 – First light of 91cm refracting telescope at Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton near San Jose, California 1889 – Astronomical Society of the Pacific founded 1890 – Albert A. Michelson proposes the stellar interferometer 1892 – George Ellery Hale finishes a spectroheliograph, which allows the Sun to be photographed in the light of one element only 1897 – Alvan Clark finishes the Yerkes 40-inch (1.0 m) optical refracting telescope, located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin
1900s 1902 – Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada established 1904 – Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington founded 1907 – F.C. Brown and Joel Stebbins develop a selenium cell photometer at the University of Illinois Observatory.
1910s 1912 – Joel Stebbins and Jakob Kunz begin to use a photometer using a photoelectric cell at the University of Illinois Observatory. 1917 – Mount Wilson 100-inch (2.5 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Mount Wilson, California 1918 – 1.8m Plaskett Telescope begins operation at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada 1919 – International Astronomical Union (IAU) founded
1930s 1930 – Bernard-Ferdinand Lyot invents the coronagraph 1930 – Karl Jansky builds a 30-meter long rotating aerial radio telescope This was the first radio telescope. 1933 – Bernard-Ferdinand Lyot invents the Lyot filter 1934 – Bernhard Schmidt finishes the first 14-inch (360 mm) Schmidt optical reflecting telescope 1936 – Palomar 18-inch (460 mm) Schmidt optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Palomar, California 1937 – Grote Reber builds a 31-foot (9.4 m) radio telescope
1940s 1941 – Dmitri Dmitrievich Maksutov invents the Maksutov telescope which is adopted by major observatories in the Soviet Union and internationally. It is now also a popular design with amateur astronomers 1946 – Martin Ryle and his group perform the first astronomical observations with a radio interferometer 1947 – Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 218-foot (66 m) non-steerable radio telescope 1949 – Palomar 48-inch (1.2 m) Schmidt optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Palomar, California 1949 – Palomar 200-inch (5.1 m) optical reflecting telescope (Hale Telescope) begins regular operation, located in Palomar, California
1950s 1953 – Luoxue Mountain Cosmic Rays Research Center, Yunnan Province, in China founded 1954 – Earth rotation aperture synthesis suggested (see e.g. Christiansen and Warburton (1955)) 1956 – Dwingeloo Radio Observatory 25 m telescope completed, Dwingeloo, Netherlands 1957 – Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 250-foot (75 m) steerable radio telescope (the Lovell Telescope) 1957 – Peter Scheuer publishes his P(D) method for obtaining source counts of spatially unresolved sources 1959 – Radio Observatory of the University of Chile, located at Maipú, Chile founded 1959 – The 3C catalogue of radio sources is published (revised in 1962) 1959 – The Shane 120-inch (3.0 m) Telescope Opened at Lick Observatory
1960s 1960 – Owens Valley 27-meter radio telescopes begin operation, located in Big Pine, California 1961 – Parkes 64-metre radio telescope begins operation, located near Parkes, Australia 1962 – European Southern Observatory (ESO) founded 1962 – Kitt Peak solar observatory founded 1962 – Green Bank, West Virginia 90m radio telescope 1962 – Orbiting Solar Observatory 1 satellite launched 1963 – Arecibo 300-meter radio telescope begins operation, located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico 1964 – Martin Ryle's 1-mile (1.6 km) radio interferometer begins operation, located in Cambridge, England 1965 – Owens Valley 40-meter radio telescope begins operation, located in Big Pine, California 1967 – First VLBI images, with 183 km baseline 1969 – Observations start at Big Bear Solar Observatory, located in Big Bear, California 1969 – Las Campanas Observatory
1970s 1970 – Cerro Tololo 158-inch (4.0 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Cerro Tololo, Chile 1970 – Kitt Peak National Observatory 158-inch (4.0 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located near Tucson, Arizona 1970 – Uhuru x-ray telescope satellite 1970 – Antoine Labeyrie performs the first high-resolution optical speckle interferometry observations 1970 – Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope completed, near Westerbork, Netherlands 1972 – 100 m Effelsberg radio telescope inaugurated (Germany) 1973 – UK Schmidt Telescope 1.2 metre optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Anglo-Australian Observatory near Coonabarabran, Australia 1974 – Anglo-Australian Telescope 153-inch (3.9 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Anglo-Australian Observatory near Coonabarabran, Australia 1975 – Gerald Smith, Frederick Landauer, and James Janesick use a CCD to observe Uranus, the first astronomical CCD observation 1975 – Antoine Labeyrie builds the first two-telescope optical interferometer 1976 – The 6-m BTA-6 (Bolshoi Teleskop Azimutalnyi or “Large Altazimuth Telescope”) goes into operation on Mt. Pashtukhov in the Russian Caucasus 1978 – Multiple Mirror 176-inch (4.5 m) equivalent optical/infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Amado, Arizona 1978 – International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) telescope satellite 1978 – Einstein High Energy Astronomy Observatory x-ray telescope satellite 1979 – UKIRT 150-inch (3.8 m) infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii 1979 – Canada-France-Hawaii 140-inch (3.6 m) optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii 1979 – NASA Infrared Telescope Facility[1] 120-inch (3.0 m) infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii
1980s 1980 – Completion of construction of the VLA, located in Socorro, New Mexico 1983 – Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) telescope 1984 – IRAM 30-m telescope at Pico Veleta near Granada, Spain completed 1987 – 15-m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope UK submillimetre telescope installed at Mauna Kea Observatory 1987 – 5-m Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) installed at the ESO La Silla Observatory 1988 – Australia Telescope Compact Array aperture synthesis radio telescope begins operation, located near Narrabri, Australia 1989 – Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite
1990s 1990 – Hubble 2.4m space Telescope launched, mirror found to be flawed 1991 – Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite 1993 – Keck 10-meter optical/infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii 1993 – Very Long Baseline Array of 10 dishes 1995 – Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST)—the first very high resolution optical astronomical images (from aperture synthesis observations) 1995 – Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope of thirty 45 m dishes at Pune 1996 – Keck 2 10-meter optical/infrared reflecting telescope begins operation, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii 1997 – The Japanese HALCA satellite begins operations, producing first VLBI observations from space, 25,000 km maximum baseline 1998 – First light at VLT1, the 8.2 m ESO telescope
2000s 2001 – First light at the Keck Interferometer. Single-baseline operations begin in the near-infrared. 2001 – First light at VLTI interferometry array. Operations on the interferometer start with single-baseline near-infrared observations with the 103 m baseline. 2005 – First imaging with the VLTI using the AMBER optical aperture synthesis instrument and three VLT telescopes. 2005 – First light at SALT, the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, with a hexagonal primary mirror of 11.1 by 9.8 meters. 2007 – First light at Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GTC), in Spain, the largest optical telescope in the world with an effective diameter of 10.4 meters. 2021 — James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), was launched 25 December 2021 on an ESA Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana and will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA's flagship mission in astrophysics. 2023 — Euclid, was launched on 1 July 2023 on a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to study dark matter and energy. 2023 — XRISM was launched on 6 September 2023 on a H-IIA rocket to study the formation of the universe and the dark matter.
Under Construction Iranian National Observatory 3.4 m (first light planned in 2020) Extremely Large Telescope (first light planned in 2027)
Planned
Public Telescope (PST), German project of astrofactum. Launch was planned for 2019, but the project's website is now defunct and no updates have been provided on the fate of the effort. Mid/late-2021 – Science first light of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is anticipated for 2021 with full science operations to begin a year later. Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, part of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. Launch is tentatively scheduled for 2027.
See also Timeline of telescope technology List of largest optical telescopes historically Extremely large telescope
References
Michael A. Hoskin (1997). The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-41158-5. Edgardo Marcorini (1988). Scienza e tecnica. Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-87196-475-5. George Ochoa; Melinda Corey (1997). The Wilson Chronology of Science and Technology: A Record of Scientific Discovery and Technological Invention, from the Stone Age to the Information Age. New York : H.W. Wilson. ISBN 978-0-8242-0933-9. Rushdī Rāshid; Régis Morelon (1996). Encyclopedia of History of Arabic Science: Astronomy- theoretical and applied. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-12410-2.