optical telescope
2
3.8
- noun
- /ˈɑptɪkəl ˈtɛlɪskoʊp/
- Specialized
:
telescopio óptico
- Optical telescopes would get busy trying to detect planets around the target star.
- large optical telescope
If you go now and you look with radio telescopes and X-ray telescopes and optical telescopes at that site, here's what you see.
- If you go now and you look with radio telescopes and X-ray telescopes and optical telescopes at that site, here's what you see.
Examples
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Could you combine several smaller optical telescopes to achieve that resolution?
Blog text (16) -
Exciting new astronomical discoveries seem to be announced daily; many new, giant optical telescopes are being built.
Academic text (1996) -
To match the resolution of an optical telescope, the radio telescope must therefore be 1 million times larger.
Academic text (1991) -
If this were the entire story, by now we would have optical telescopes as large as a football stadium.
Academic text (1990) -
M81's central regions appear very bright and full of stars to astronomers looking through optical telescopes.
Academic text (1994) -
Of course, a ground-based optical telescope would never achieve that kind of resolution because of blurring caused by the Earth's atmosphere.
Academic text (1996) -
Astronomy emerged as a scientific field with the optical telescope, and astronomers still use optical telescopes today.
Blog text (20) -
In the near future, PARI intends to add optical telescopes at the site, which will provide a full complement of astronomical tools and instrumentation.
Academic text (2000) -
Astronomers presented the first images made with the world's largest optical telescope, the 10-meter WM.
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Kris stood in the dimly lit dome and looked up at the main optical telescope at McMasters Observatory.
Synonyms
440
3.3
A tool with lenses or mirrors that makes far things look closer
3
7.0
A telescope that uses a large curved mirror to make distant objects look closer
2
7.0
A telescope that uses lenses to bend light to make an image
1
5.5
A telescope that uses a large curved mirror to gather and focus light for looking
1
6.7
A telescope that uses a large lens to bend light to make images you view through an eyepiece
1
5.7
An instrument for looking at distant stars, planets, and galaxies
A telescope with a mirror and a special curved glass that takes clear photos of wide areas of the sky
A telescope with a curved mirror and thin glass plate that takes clear wide pictures of the sky
A telescope for taking pictures of the night sky
A telescope with a camera that takes pictures of the Sun
A telescope with mirrors that sends light to a fixed point for a camera or an instrument that measures light
A telescope setup that bends light to a fixed point so instruments stay still
An early telescope invented by Galileo that uses two lenses to make upright images
How Powerful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'optical' (relating to light/vision) simply specifies the kind of 'telescope' (a device for magnifying distant objects), so a learner who knows both words can derive that it is a telescope using visible light. This adjective+noun pattern is transparent and cross-linguistically common, making the phrase immediately understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
Optical telescope comes from the parts optical (about light and seeing) and telescope (a word that means 'to look far'). It literally names a device that uses lenses or mirrors to gather and focus light so faraway objects look closer, which is why it means 'an instrument that gathers and focuses visible light to observe distant objects'.