Do astronomers spend a lot of time looking through telescopes at work?
Not at all. We spend most of our time these days combing through the data we have obtained with satellite observatories, computer calculations, or in some cases, ground-based observatories which do have telescopes. We rarely look through eyepieces these days because we have photographic and electronic detectors that are millions of time better at recording the light received by the telescopes. Not all astronomers use optical telescopes, or even bother to ‘go observing’ since there is plenty of work in interpreting old data to keep many of us busy formulating new theories about how various phenomena work.
