Galileo’s telescope brought about revolutionary changes in  astronomy. A comparable leap in our ability to observe the  universe took place as a result of the Hubble Space Telescope.  The space telescope was able to see stars and galaxies whose  brightness is 1/50 of the faintest objects observable using  ground-based telescopes. Use the fact that the brightness of  a point source, such as a star, varies inversely as the square of its distance from an observer to show that the space telescope  was able to see about seven times farther than a ground based telescope.