Giant Telescopes and Observatories

The machines themselves, not the pictures they take. This gallery shows the great instruments built to look at the universe: a record refractor from the 1890s and the mirrors that followed it, segmented giants on mountain summits, radio dishes in valleys and deserts, and the space telescopes that work above the air. Each photo shows the telescope, its mirror or its domes, and each caption gives the number that matters, usually mirror or dish size, along with why it was built where it stands. High, dry and dark sites suit optical and millimeter work; radio dishes need quiet places far from transmitters; X-ray telescopes have to leave the atmosphere altogether. It runs roughly from historic optical telescopes to modern ones, then radio, then space.