@sonhouse
There is a program that basically gives you a personal observatory with a magnification of 1,000,000 X and lets you look at any star, planet, cosmic object or space-thing in the known universe, past, present or future. It's called 'Stellarium' and it should look extra nice on a 4K monitor.
@bunnyknight
I never heard of a space telescope in terms of magnification. 1 mil seems like a lot.
@sonhouse saidYes, telescopes use that focal-length term, but I find simple magnification more useful.
@bunnyknight
I never heard of a space telescope in terms of magnification. 1 mil seems like a lot.
In that program you can, for example, locate, Europa and zoom in to see all the tiny ice mountains. It's a free, open source app that not only holds the entire stellar database of everything known to date, but its exact orbital position at any time. You can even see Voyager if you know where to look.
@bunnyknight
Yes, there are great images of Europa and the like but that is not from a telescope based on Earth or in space, that is a probe flashing by a few hundred Km above those moons and such.
If you take as base the venerable binoculars around for centuries, the 7X50, 50 mm lens at 7 power puts the image to match the pupal of our eyes, so a 500 mm lens would give 70 power and a 5 METER lens would give you 700 power, a 50 meter lens, 7000 power.
Of course you can get more but the image doesn't fill you whole pupal at that point, so you can get 70,000 power out of that alleged 50 meter scope and such but to fill your pupal at 1 million power, a 500 meter scope would etch out 700,000 power, so maybe a 700 meter scope could fetch 1 mega power but that is a tad bit ahead of our ability to make right now.
On the other hand, the resolution of multiscopes linked together can make effective mag as if it was a single mirror the size of the distance between scopes but so far we cannot get scopes to be in phase at 700 meter distance apart, but even that may be changing with some real advances in telescope tech, using quantum physics that may allow scopes to combine at kilometer separation but that is probably 20 years away from real scopes. The one thing about separated scopes, the effective magnification goes up but not the ability to capture light that a real 700 meter scope would give, the light gathering power is just how much glass reflects the light.
@sonhouse saidOf course the Stellarium images are not all Earth-based. They are a compilation of the best images available to our scientists and inserted into a virtual simulation that's accurate true-to-life, and available at your fingertips even on a dark and stormy day.
@bunnyknight
Yes, there are great images of Europa and the like but that is not from a telescope based on Earth or in space, that is a probe flashing by a few hundred Km above those moons and such.
If you take as base the venerable binoculars around for centuries, the 7X50, 50 mm lens at 7 power puts the image to match the pupal of our eyes, so a 500 mm lens would give 7 ...[text shortened]... eal 700 meter scope would give, the light gathering power is just how much glass reflects the light.
As for real telescopes, I'd like to see 1000 linked Hubbles placed in a circle 5000 miles in diameter at L2. And yes, we could EASILY afford this by simply converting a fraction of our military industry to space-science.
@bunnyknight
Right now we don't have sufficiently advanced technology to pull that one off, not that part of making all those scope, I mean right now if we HAD that bunch in space we couldn't use the separation even ONE mile apart much less than 5000 miles apart, the phase signal of the light goes bonkers after just a 100 yards or so. In space that would be a lot easier but I think it will have to await quantum links using superpositioning systems to get that may scopes that far apart to work, at least that is what the theory boys are saying, If it were possible, it would be much better to put them a million miles apart, 250 times the resolution ones a mere 5k miles apart🙂
@sonhouse saidThe 1000 scopes would communicate directly with the equidistant central hub at the center of the circle, where all the data would be processed and sent back to earth in a single data stream. A computer could keep all the scopes perfectly aligned at all times.
@bunnyknight
Right now we don't have sufficiently advanced technology to pull that one off, not that part of making all those scope, I mean right now if we HAD that bunch in space we couldn't use the separation even ONE mile apart much less than 5000 miles apart, the phase signal of the light goes bonkers after just a 100 yards or so. In space that would be a lot easier but ...[text shortened]... much better to put them a million miles apart, 250 times the resolution ones a mere 5k miles apart🙂
@bunnyknight
Not that simple bunnyman🙂 In order to process multiple scopes the light from each scope has to be totally in phase with each other and right now that is no go for anything over a hundred yards or so. That is why I mentioned work going on in Quantum physics that may get around that problem so maybe 20 years from now scopes can do what you want but not right now. The big Keck outfit has four or five scopes able to combine light to make it act like one big scope the distance between them but they are very close to one another due to the limitations of getting phase control for each beam coming from the scopes, just having the light is not even CLOSE to doing the job otherwise it would have been done decades ago.
The quantum guys are talking about making each photon superpositioned so they will be essentially one light source. Not happening right now at all, just theory I think.
Here is a link for you to bunny ponder on🙂
https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-quantum-experiment-offers-hope-for-earth-size-telescope-20210505/
@sonhouse saidYou don't superposition photons from all the scopes; you superposition the digital data. Just like those cheap tiny smart-phone cameras can combine several photos together to form an amazing image that's impossible with a single shot. It's all done by digital AI processing.
@bunnyknight
Not that simple bunnyman🙂 In order to process multiple scopes the light from each scope has to be totally in phase with each other and right now that is no go for anything over a hundred yards or so. That is why I mentioned work going on in Quantum physics that may get around that problem so maybe 20 years from now scopes can do what you want but not right now ...[text shortened]... ps://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-quantum-experiment-offers-hope-for-earth-size-telescope-20210505/
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Well, I am still pretty shocked, but I found a museum that is doing a live feed with NASA on July 12. I will get to witness the first images released to the public in real time. Also they will be displayed on a giant screen. I’ve already arranged to take a vacation day from work for the event. And to think—it’s less than an hour’s drive from my country home!
@bunnyknight
No, in fact it is the PHOTONS carrying the data and it is THOSE photons which have to be pristine and in phase with all the other scopes. THEN the light patterns can be TURNED to data not before and it is nowhere as simple as you suppose.
@Liljo
Which NASA site is that? I used to work at Goddard, Kinsington Maryland.
I think we already know what photos they will be, solar asteroids or minor planets here, mainly to fine tune the instruments and get science at the same time.
The real work will be on exoplanets many light years from Earth.
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@sonhouse saidCheck this link. This is how I found the event that is reasonable close to my home.
@Liljo
Which NASA site is that? I used to work at Goddard, Kinsington Maryland.
I think we already know what photos they will be, solar asteroids or minor planets here, mainly to fine tune the instruments and get science at the same time.
The real work will be on exoplanets many light years from Earth.
https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/events
Also, see:
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/01/how-to-see-webbs-first-images/