ABSTRACT
In ultraviolet astronomy, techniques were somewhat similar to those in optical astronomy, with telescopes and spectrometers of a familiar design. In X-ray astronomy, the instrumental challenges are very different from those posed by ultraviolet and optical astronomy. As the importance of X-ray astronomy grew, technological developments led to the building of X-ray telescopes with accuracies of a few seconds of arc. The overview of the new astronomies outlined was given in the chronological order of their development – radio, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. In gamma-ray astronomy, no kind of imaging telescope is possible because no material can reflect ultraviolet radiation even at the finest of glancing angles. The first of the new astronomies was radio astronomy. It had been known that radio emissions came from space since 1931, when Karl Jansky, detected “noise” in a radio antenna he was developing for communication purposes.
