Huygens is known, among other things, for his contributions to astronomy. He discovered Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and also studied the planet’s rings. He achieved this even though the telescope was described at the time as being noisy or blurry than it should have been.
Huygens has built a two-lens telescope, and will keep a table of the lenses that need to be combined for the different magnification levels. However, his calculations fall short of current understanding of optics. As it turns out, Huygens may be myopic, which explains why his telescope is so blurry. As for his eyesight, it might have been sharp, due to the nature of his eyes. This supports contemporary accounts that Huygens’ father was nearsighted, and that the condition may have run in families. According to astronomer Alexander Petrou’s calculations, Huygens probably had 20/70 vision, as he could only read 20 feet of what a person with “normal” vision could read from 70 feet away.
This is a theory that answers quite an interesting puzzle from hundreds of years ago. Today, our problems with telescopes are even more complicated. If only a simple pair of glasses could solve NASA’s problems!
