Tant: Galileo opened heavens for scientific discovery
It has been 400 years now since the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei used a new device called a telescope to view the heavens. It has been 50 years since I first viewed the moon and planets through a telescope my parents gave me as a Christmas gift in 1959, when I was 12 years old. When I first gazed at the moon and the planets with the little instrument, I felt some of the same awe, humility and wonder that Galileo himself must have felt on those long-ago nights in Italy when he aimed his epoch-making instrument to the skies in 1609.

Good Samaritan Hospital Patient First in California to Receive Telescope Implant for Macular Degeneration
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Physicians at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles successfully implanted the FDA-approved eye telescope, a first in California.  The first-of-kind telescope implant is integral to CentraSightâ„¢, a new patient care program for treating patients with end-stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most advanced form of AMD and the leading cause of blindness in older Americans.  It is the only medical/surgical option that improves visual acuity by reducing the impact of the central vision blind spot caused by end-stage AMD. (Logo: ) Smaller than a pea, the telescope implant uses micro-optical technology to magnify images ...