[Physics] Is a mirror-less telescope possible

telescopes

I was reading about telescopes and the Hubble Telescope for example has a 2.4m mirror which reflects lights to a sensor. Other type of telescopes use lenses to focus light to the imaging sensor.

I was wondering, is it possible to have a telescope without a mirror or lens?
So in Hubble's case, instead of having a 2.4m mirror reflecting light to a small sensor, why not have a big imaging sensor (same size as the mirror – 2.4m). Would this type of telescope have similar capabilities as the mirror one?

I know that we use mirrors because it's way cheaper and easier than building large sensors but I'm curious if a mirror-less telescope would be better / worse or just the same.

Best Answer

Systems other than mirrors can provide telescope function.

There's four other ways to make a telescope.

  1. Like Galileo did, we can use lenses instead of mirrors (this does not work well at large scale).

  2. One can employ diffraction structures (holograms, or gratings, or zone plates), but there are significant problems in doing this for a broad range of wavelengths.

  3. More primitive, is the pinhole camera, and variations using multiple holes, so-called "coded apertures"; that is how some X-ray imaging is done, but it takes a lot of work.

  4. Last, is to find a black hole or neutron star, and take advantage of the gravitational bending of light in its vicinity. That's more of a discovery than a construction project, but several useful systems have come into view.Hubble gravity lens

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