Say “Cheese,” Space!

Humans have looked up at the night sky with wonder for thousands of years. But it’s only in the past 400 years that we’ve had the tools to really see what’s out there—thanks to telescopes. These devices create bigger images of faraway objects.

Over time, people have built ever-larger and more powerful telescopes. The instruments have allowed scientists to make remarkable discoveries, like how the universe formed and which planets besides our own could possibly support life. 

“Almost everything we know about the universe, it’s because of telescopes,” says Ardis Herrold, who works with the new telescope.

The telescope in Chile is expected to astonish scientists with a lot of new information. As soon as it was put to work, it spotted 2,104 large space rocks, called asteroids. If any of these rocks were to hit our planet, it’d be a disaster. To keep Earth safe, it’s important to know  where asteroids are headed.

Another big discovery that could dazzle scientists? Finding an additional faraway planet circling our sun! (That would bump up the number of planets in our solar system to nine.) “Our telescope is the best instrument ever built to find that planet, if it exists,” Herrold says.

So stay tuned. And be ready for your jaw to drop.

^{_{©2025 by Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. Permission granted to teachers and subscribers to make copies of this page to distribute to their students. No other copying, transmission, or downloading is permitted and this page may not be used to train any artificial intelligence technologies.}}

^{_{This article was originally published in the October/November 2025 issue.}}