From Pupils to Space Telescopes: What Your Eyes Can Teach You About How Telescopes Work - Livestream

In this 1-hour workshop for middle school teachers, we'll explore how your eyes form images, and how your pupil and iris are key to understanding how all optical tools work, even the largest space-based telescopes.

While most people have a general idea of how their eyes work, they haven’t made the connection between them and other optical tools such as cameras, microscopes, or telescopes. All telescopes - whether they are large or small, ground-based or space-based, optical or radio - rely on lenses and mirrors to organize light and form images of distant objects. But it all starts with an aperture: the hole where light enters an optical system and is far more important than you expect. In this workshop, participants will explore how making holes in a simple optical system reveals the basis for understanding how our eyes - and even the largest telescopes on Earth and in space - work.

Intended for middle school teachers