Telescope earliest existing record of a telescope was a 1608 patent submitted to the government in the Netherlands by Middelburg spectacle maker Hans Lippershey for a refracting telescope. The actual inventor is unknown but word of it spread through Europe. [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]] heard about it and, in 1609, built his own version, and made his telescopic observations of celestial objects. The idea that the [[Objective (optics)|objective]], or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope. The potential advantages of using [[parabolic reflector|parabolic mirrors]]—reduction of [[spherical aberration]] and no
Visible-light astronomy and objects in the night sky for thousands of years, as is evident in the naming of many constellations, notably the largely Greek names used today. Hans Lippershey, a German-Dutch spectacle-maker, is commonly credited as being the first to invent the telescope. Lippershey is the first recorded person to apply for a patent for a telescope, however it is unclear if Lippershey was the first to build a telescope. Based only on uncertain descriptions of the telescope which Lippershey tried to obtain a patent for, Galileo made a telescope with about 3x magnification in the following year. Galileo later made