About the plaque on his teeth, van Leeuwenhoek noted that the bacteria was “very prettily a-moving” in the spittle, one type going “like a pike does through the water.”

Had people been ready, would the technology have been pushed harder?  It’s notable that van Leeuwenhoek was utterly unknown: he had no training in natural philosophy/natural history, as the sciences were then called. The “father of microbiology” was completely self-taught. In the context of a rich Dutch glass-making tradition, he perfected his own lenses, grinding and polishing them himself. His microscopes weren’t even the compound type used by others; they were single lens devices, basically extraordinary magnifying glasses. He never published a book; the record of his work is in his correspondence with the Royal Society.

JSTOR Daily provides context for current events using scholarship found in JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and other material. We publish articles grounded in peer-reviewed research and provide free access to that research for all of our readers.

It was the Dutch Antony Van Leeuwenhoek who used the microscope to start making discoveries, not just bigger pictures of things. The tradesman turned to crafting his own lenses, which had up to 300X magnification, a huge jump in power from most previous devices, the best of which were in the 20-30 x life-size range. His curiosity was large, too. He is credited with discovering bacteria, protists, nematodes, and spermatozoa, among other things. He examined and drew the “animalcules” (from the Latin for “little animals”) of his own semen after sex. (Mrs. van Leeuwenhoek’s opinion that famous event does not seem to have been reported.)

This hobby can be complex. And camera telescope combinations add to that complexity. In addition, there’s another factor that I didn’t cover, which is a bit more advanced, and that’s how suitable the camera is for any given telescope. The quality of the telescope, the effective seeing (a measure of atmospheric turbulence), focal length, effective resolution of your telescope, and the camera’s pixel size all factor into what makes a specific camera better or worse for your imaging outcome. Fortunately, Astronomy.tools offers a CCD Suitability Calculator that helps you properly pair a camera with your telescope, and they provide a good overview of the reasoning behind picking the perfect camera for your gear.

Telescope field of viewcalculator

Here’e two cameras that I currently use. The ZWO ASI1600MM-C camera, and the Two ASI2600MC-Pro camera. The former is a mono camera, and the latter is a color camera. But, lets ignore that fact right now, and just look at the sensor sizes. The 1600 is a 4/3” sensor size, which is approximately 17.7mm X 13.4mm.

Field of view ofatelescopeformula

This example shows M81 and M82, Bodes Nebula and the Cigar Galaxy. This screenshot was taken in SkySafari 6 Pro, which also has FOV tools for all your telescope and camera combinations. Here we see that the ZWO ASI1600MM-C is a bit small with this scope, and I risk cutting off one of the galaxies. But if I go with the larger ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro camera, the sensor is large enough to cover both galaxies and leave a little room to spare.

Compound microscopes eventually surpassed van Leeuwenhoek’s devices. And by the 1850s, they were both standard scientific equipment in labs and a pedagogical-entertainment standby in middle class Victorian homes, where the animalcules took on a life of their own.

Field of viewhuman eye

So some seventy years separated the invention of the microscope and “any systematic work of great and lasting scientific value.” Ball attributes this to the primitiveness of the early microscopes, which were very hard to use. Perhaps more importantly, she argues that the developing biological sciences, especially botany and anatomy—which would later benefit so much from magnification—were not advanced enough to realize “the significance of the observations made.”

Telescopesimulator

The first compound microscopes date to 1590. These devices use more than one lens, a step above most single magnifying lenses or glasses. The actual inventor is contested because there were several people at work on them, but father and son team Hans and Zacharias Jensen are usually credited.

Your field of view (FOV) is the view your telescope has of the star field in the night sky. Telescope and camera selection has an effect on your FOV and in turn the size of object that’s suited for imaging with that combination. In the example above, I have 5 of my telescopes paired with a single camera, the ZWO ASI2600 MC-Pro. You can see how using the single camera with the different focal length telescopes has an effect on the size of the imaging area.

At the widest FOV you have the William Optics RedCat 51 telescope, and at the narrowest FOV you have the Celestron EdgeHD 11” telescope. The Edge scope is going to image an area that is much smaller, or more zoomed in, while the RedCat is going to image a much wider field. For this target of M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy), the Edge is only going to capture a portion of the galaxy, while the RedCat is going to capture an area much larger than the galaxy. But, it looks like my Astro-Tech AT60ED is just right for the job.

Biologist Clara Sue Ball examines why “the early history of the compound microscope reveals a curious lack of interest among scientists in the possibilities of the new instrument.”

JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.

Camerafield of viewsimulator

I use the website Astronomy.tools to check my equipment combinations during object selection to find the most suitable telescope and camera for the job.

Telescope field of viewapp

Field of viewcamera

Now, lets see how camera sensor size has an effect on the available FOV. Since you’re “seeing” the object with the camera sensor, the size of sensor plays into how large your FOV would be with the selected telescope.

The word “microscope” first appeared in print in 1625. And yet, as Ball writes, no “truly scientific use was made of the microscope” until 1661, when Marcello Malpighi discovered capillaries in the dried lung of a frog. His work would have been impossible without a microscope. Robert Hooke’s famous book Micrographia of 1665, with its sumptuous illustrations of tiny things, confirmed the importance of the new technology for observation.

The first compound microscopes date to 1590, but it was the Dutch Antony Van Leeuwenhoek in the mid-seventeenth century who first used them to make discoveries.

Field of viewcalculator astrophotography

When the microscope was first invented, it was a novelty item. Early examples were called flea or fly glasses, since they magnified those small insects to what seemed a great size at the time. But scientists didn’t readily take to the new technology.

Finally, here’s one more example of a different target, using the same two cameras, but the GSO 8” Ritchey Chreiten telescope instead.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

So, lets see how these cameras work on a new target. I’ve picked a small galaxy, M51. In this example, I’m using the same exact telescope, the Celestron EdgeHD 11”, but pairing it with two different cameras. You can see, the 1600 camera provides better framing, as the 2600 is just a bit larger.

Secondly, pick a target you’re looking to image for the night. You can use the search or pick a common Messier or planetary object. Then proceed to choose your telescope and camera combination.

The first thing you’ll want to do is select the Imaging Mode tab at the top of the page. This allows you to pick a telescope and camera combination. If you are in visual mode, you can test out eye piece and telescope combinations to see how large an object should appear visually when looking through the telescope with your eyes.