Why are astronomers making telescoped larger and larger?

Question

Why are astronomers making telescoped larger and larger?

Answer 1

simple. astronomers want ot see as "far back in time" as possible. this is to say, look as far out into the universe as we can and study the conditions of objects like quasars, neutron stars, and pulsars as they were when the universe began.

Answer 2

To see farther and fainter!

Answer 3

Day by day our interest and imaginations are growing up.

Answer 4

because making them smaller would only show stuff that we've already seen

Answer 5

Basically, the wider the aperture, the more light the telescope can collect and the smaller the angle that the telescope can resolve.

Dawes' Limit says R = 4.56/D (D being the diameter of the aperture in inches, and R being the resolving power in arcseconds).

Doubling the aperture size will only half the angle that can be resolved.  The difference between a 12 inch aperture and a 30 inch aperture is 0.2 arcseconds.  The difference between a 30 inch aperture and a 60 inch aperture is 0.076arcseconds.  As you can see, astronomers need to start making things a heck of a lot bigger just to get that tiny bit more.