How Space Telescopes Work
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on 30 August 2026, and in October NASA said the optics of its main camera are nearly 30 percent better than predicted. This film explains how space telescopes work: a mirror as a bucket for light, how a reflecting telescope focuses it, what limits sharpness, how Hubble's mirror went wrong and was fixed, why the atmosphere blurs and blocks starlight, why infrared telescopes must be cold, why Webb and Roman sit a million miles away at L2, and how Roman's wide view will hunt planets by microlensing. Change the mirror, blur two stars, switch off the atmosphere and watch a star magnify another.
Buckets for starlight
NASA’s newest eye in space.
A bucket in the rain
Light gathering grows with area.
Mirrors, not lenses
How the light is brought to a point.
Two stars or one?
Why wider mirrors see sharper.
A mirror ground wrong
Hubble’s first three years.
Above the air
Two reasons to leave the ground.
Seeing heat
Why Webb is gold and cold.
Parking at L2
Where Webb and Roman live.
A wide-angle Hubble
Built to survey, not just to zoom.
Planets by magnification
A trick Einstein predicted.
Mapping the universe
Dark matter, dark energy and a puzzle.
A bigger bucket, a wider net
Three ways to see more.
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