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Seeing the Universe

before 1610 - naked eye astronomy
1608 - Galileo's hand held telescopes
1673 - Hevelius' long telescopes
1780 - Herschel's large reflectors
1838 - Meridian Circles
1845 - Rosse's Leviathian
1890 - Barnard's camera
1923 - The Hooker 100 inch
1948 - The Palomar 200 inch
1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope
1998 - The Keck 10 metre pair
2000 - The VLT array
2015 - JWST Plans
201? - OWL Plans
How much further?

Astronomers are planning the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope - The James Webb Space Telescope. It will be launched in 2015. It will orbit the Sun, far from Earth, at a lagrangian point. It will be powerful enough to resolve earth like planets around nearby stars as points of light. Some preliminary designs are shown here.  The James Webb Space Telescope

NGST proposals (STScI)