A telescope is an instrument that makes faraway objects, like stars and planets, look closer and clearer. It uses lenses or mirrors to collect and focus light.
It comes from Greek 'tēle' meaning 'far' and 'skopein' meaning 'to look at or examine'. The word was coined in the early 1600s when such instruments were first developed.
A telescope doesn’t just 'zoom in'—it gathers more light, like having a giant pupil instead of your tiny eye. Some modern telescopes see in invisible light, like infrared or X‑rays, so in a sense they show us a universe our naked eyes were never built to see.
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