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1. 荷兰人汉斯李博斯（Hans Lippershey）于1608年发明了望远镜，但有传闻说在此三年前，当一群孩子在眼镜制造商店铺里玩透镜的时候，望远镜就已经发明了。那种事情在微软游戏机XBOX出现之前时常发生。（意指现在的孩子的创造力都被电子游戏扼杀了。）
2.Early telescopes sold like mad to merchants, who used them to spot approaching trade ships in hopes of beating out competitors.2. 早期的望远镜卖给商人都卖疯了，他们藉此辨认驶来的商船并希望击败竞争对手。
3.Telescopes gave rise to the first high-speed telecommunications networks: spyglasses that were used to relay semaphore signals from miles away.
3. 望远镜导致了第一个高速电信网络的出现：一些小望远镜用来中转数英里外的旗语信号。
4.Galileo was the first to turn the telescope skyward, leading to the discovery of Jupiter’s satellites and craters on the moon. Less cleverly, he also pointed his telescope at the sun, which may have triggered his later blindness.4. 伽利略第一个将望远镜用于天文观测，这导致了木星卫星和月球陨石坑的发现。但不够聪明的是，他也将望远镜指向了太阳，这可能是他后来眼盲的诱因。
5.Ireland’s “Leviathan of Parsonstown,” a 40-ton reflecting telescope built by the Earl of Rosse in 1845, was the world’s largest for seven decades. But wet weather kept it shut down most of the time.5. 爱尔兰的“帕森镇巨兽”，一个由罗斯伯爵于1845年建成的40吨重的反射式天文望远镜，是过去七十年间最大的望远镜。但当地潮湿的天气让它没用过多少次。
6.Almost every major observatory since then has been built in the clear, thin air of a remote mountaintop.6. 从那时起，几乎每个大天文台都建在远离城市并且空气清澈稀薄的山巅。
7. 为运输加利福尼亚威尔逊山直径100英寸的胡克天文望远镜，近200人用绳索拽着卡车沿着曲折的山路走了8小时才到达山顶。
8.But it was worth it. The Hooker Telescope proved that other galaxies exist and that the universe is expanding.8. 但这很值。胡克天文望远镜证实了河外星系的存在，以及宇宙正在膨胀。
9.Today, using an Internet-based telescope such as the Seeing in the Dark scope at New Mexico Skies, any amateur can command a robotic observatory while lounging at home.9. 今天我们使用基于互联网的天文望远镜，比如新墨西哥的“观察黑暗”望远镜，每个成年人都可以待在家里遥控机器人来观测太空。
10. 现在许多职业天文学家也这么做，通过计算机远程操作天文望远镜，他们很少直接通过目镜观测太空。
11.Long time coming: NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, seven years late and $2 billion over budget.11. 划时代的标志：NASA（美国航空航天局）于1990年发射了哈勃太空望远镜，7年后超出预算20亿美元。
12.Hubble’s eight-foot light-collecting mirror had to be polished continuously for a year to an accuracy of 10 nanometers, about 1/10,000 the width of a human hair.12. 哈勃望远镜的8英尺聚光镜的磨制耗时一年，精度要求10纳米，大约是头发直径的万分之一。
13.Unfortunately, the contractors polished the mirror precisely wrong, off by a painful 2,200 nanometers.13. 不幸的是，承包商把精度弄错了，精度变成了令人心痛的2200纳米。
14.Since the problem was fixed in 1993 by installing corrective lenses, Hubble has become the source of roughly 25 percent of all published astronomy research papers.14. 这个问题1993通过安装矫正镜组得以解决。哈勃望远镜成为近四分之一天文学研究所发表论文的数据源头。
15. 望远镜收集的是无线电波而非可见光信号。这得益于1932年，工程师卡尔•简斯基注意到他的仪器受静电困扰，每天状态都有所变化，这是因为仪器天线收集了可见和不可见的宇宙射电源信号。
16.In 1965 engineers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were also bugged by micro wave static, this time from every part of the sky. After eliminating poop from roosting pigeons as the cause, they realized they’d discovered the cosmic microwave background, the Big Bang’s afterglow.16. 1965年工程师阿诺彭齐亚斯（Arno Penzias）和罗伯特威尔逊（Robert Wilson）也受到微波静电的干扰，而且检测到整个天空都有。在消除了噪声干扰的因素后，他们意识到他们发现了宇宙微波背景辐射，这是宇宙大爆炸的余辉。
17.See for yourself: Tune an old analog TV to an empty channel. Much of that “snow” is from the cosmic microwave background.17. 自己看看：打开老式模拟电视，切换到一个空台，许多“雪花”就是宇宙微波背景辐射。
18. 伽马射线天文望远镜能探测到宇宙最猛烈的爆炸光线，比如由天体塌缩成黑洞的情况。如果地球周边6000光年内有一处发生伽马射线爆炸，我们就都成干儿了。
19.Weirdest telescope ever? In the 1960s physicist Raymond Davis Jr. used 100,000 gallons of dry-cleaning fluid to detect invisble neutrino particles as they stream from the sun.19. 史上最神的天文望远镜，当属20世纪60年代由物理学家雷蒙德戴维斯（小）所建造的，他用十万加仑干洗流体来探测太阳发出的不可见中微子粒子。
20.Davis’s bizarre telescope worked, revealing fundamental new physics and netting him a Nobel in 2002.20. 戴维斯这台神奇的天文望远镜还真管用，他不但靠这个揭示了新物理学的基础，还收获了2002年度的诺贝尔奖。
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