No I more meant a telescope like Hubble that orbits Earth but has a shorter range to just see objects in the solar system. Or is that too wide of a range with vastly different sized objects at different distances for one scope to do?
Again the aperture size would be so huge, it would be unlaunchable in a single shot, and would need to be assembled in space. The James Webb scope as it is, which will be Hubbles ultimate replacement will be parked behind the moon about 3X the distance from the Earth. It will be unfolded in space like a giant transformer, and is pretty much the limit of what can be launched. The thing is a monster. To give an idea of the size, this is a scale model....
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to pylon For This Useful Post:
I though Hubble was taking images of objects around the solar system prior to having its optics repaired.
I guess one issue would be that planets are not *as* stationary as galaxies, nebulas, etc. that Hubble typically goes for. So, the tracking the target might be more difficult to get as good of images as the probes can.
The images Hubble has returned of anything from Saturn in, is excellent. Once you go beyond that....Uranus is decent, Neptune is ok'ish....the tracking is a non-issue. It's simple math and Hubble is more than equipped to point at the stuff. It's the optics that becomes the ultimate limiting factor, and how much light can the thing capture. More aperture = more light gathering, more light gathering = better images. The galaxies and Nebulae the image with Hubble are in many cases 100's of light years across. I can observe galaxies and some Nebulae with my 8" amateur telescope. Yet Uranus looks like a fuzzy green blob of a star.
The Following User Says Thank You to pylon For This Useful Post:
picture below of what Hubble sees when it looks at Pluto. basically a blobby piece of crap. in order to get high res images anywhere near what New Horizons will be able to take, the 2 meter mirror of the Hubble would have to be increased at least an order of magnitude.
launching big heavy equipment like that and assembling in orbit is unbelievably expensive, and not even that practical anymore now that we have adaptive optics. back when Hubble was new, we didn't have the technology to cancel out atmospheric interference...now we do, and we have ground-based telescopes that far exceed Hubble's resolving power. the main reason to launch space telescopes nowadays is to see things in wavelengths that don't penetrate the atmosphere well, e.g. infrared; hence the James Webb.
The Following User Says Thank You to Inglewood Jack For This Useful Post:
Pic taken July 7th from 5 million miles away shows a bright heart-shaped area is around 1,200 miles across and scientists are puzzled about what it might be.
To me, one of the most terrifying aspects of the James Webb scope, would be a launch failure.There will be almost 20 years of work into it by the time it launches, and apparently the mirrors are virtually irreplaceable.
Again the aperture size would be so huge, it would be unlaunchable in a single shot, and would need to be assembled in space. The James Webb scope as it is, which will be Hubbles ultimate replacement will be parked behind the moon about 3X the distance from the Earth. It will be unfolded in space like a giant transformer, and is pretty much the limit of what can be launched. The thing is a monster. To give an idea of the size, this is a scale model....
To me, one of the most terrifying aspects of the James Webb scope, would be a launch failure.There will be almost 20 years of work into it by the time it launches, and apparently the mirrors are virtually irreplaceable.
I read somewhere if it fails they could build another within 18 months, anyway have faith, they do much crazier things with 100% success in space these days.
Thanks Nyah. So it still seems to me that we could have built and launched a telescope built to see the solar system in high-res for less cost and time than it took to send these probes all over the place, unless there's another reason to get that close other than pictures. Can't we see what the planet is made of (element wise) from here?
Another way to look at it...
At closest approach New Horizons will be able to see down to 100m resolution. Pluto is 2300km in diameter so we could get an image 23,000 pixels across, ignoring the curve of Pluto.
Pictures of Pluto with Hubble are like a few pixels wide to maybe 15 with the older camera, so lets just call it 20 pixels.
To see Pluto with a telescope at the same resolution New Horizons will see Pluto we'd need one with over 1000x the resolving power.
Imagine building a telescope with a mirror hundreds of metres or even kilometres across! James Webb will costs what, $10 billion or more when it's done, and that's just for a telescope with a 6.5m diameter mirror.
New Horizons cost less than $1 billion.
Planets and stars are really really small compared to galaxies and stuff.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
So crazy. Visiting different worlds, billions of kms away. It's just incredible that this type of stuff isn't bigger news when compared to things like Royal weddings/babies and Kardashian ass.
__________________
The Following 17 Users Say Thank You to Coach For This Useful Post:
Owing to the huge distance to Pluto and complicated maneuvers planned, though, data from the spacecraft will not start arriving back at Earth until tonight.
The spacecraft has already made a significant discovery, with the size of Pluto being re-calculated based on data from its final approach earlier today. The new figure adds about 50 kilometers (30 miles) to Pluto’s width, giving it a diameter of 2,370 kilometers (1,473 miles).
This is significant, as it now means it is larger than another dwarf planet called Eris by about 34 kilometers (28 miles), although Eris remains about a quarter more massive. Previously, it was thought that Eris was bigger in size too, and its discovery in 2005 led to Pluto’s demotion from the ninth planet of the system.
The first signal from the spacecraft, confirming the flyby was successful, is expected back this evening at 8.53 p.m. EDT (tomorrow at 1.53 a.m. BST). Images and provisional data will then follow.
The full story of the flyby, and all of the measurements that were obtained, will take a full 16 months to unravel, owing to the low bit rate of the spacecraft and the vast distances involved – 4.8 billion km (3 billion miles) and counting.
