If we in theory built a gigantic telescope placed outside the earths atmosphere, could we do the following?


telescope
McDonald asked:


My question is, if we were to build a gigantic telescope that could show us incredible detail on planets, would we actually be seeing what’s happening on the planet in real-time, or would we still see what’s happened several minutes ago because of the fact that light has to travel down to us to see anything. Thats supposing we could view, or record live views through the telescope eyepiece.

By the way, I know how expensive and difficult this would be, but if we in theory did make such a telescope, would we be viewing in real-time?

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4 Responses to “If we in theory built a gigantic telescope placed outside the earths atmosphere, could we do the following?”

  1. elfmotat Says:
    July 6th, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    It would depend on what planet we’d be looking at, but there would always be some time dilation. elfmotat

  2. capitalgentleman Says:
    July 6th, 2010 at 4:44 pm

    As the speed of light is constant, what we would see would have happened in the past.

    E.g., viewing a planet on a star 10 light years away (meaning the light takes 10 years to get here) means we are seeing what happened there 10 years ago.

    Even when the guys went to the moon, there was a delay in communications. Radio goes at the speed of light (3×10^8 m/s), and the moon is about a 1/2 second away. Thus, when we heard “The Eagle has landed,” (well, some of us are old enough to remember that!), it had actually happened a 1/2 second before that. This is why remote controlling vehicles on Mars doesn’t work - the delays are far too long. capitalgentleman

  3. ballistictx Says:
    July 7th, 2010 at 10:46 am

    There is a time delay on every single thing that we see no matter how far away it is, even your own reflection, when you look at your self in the mirror you are seeing yourself appx. 3 nano seconds in the past. ballistictx

  4. dmlex1 Says:
    July 8th, 2010 at 2:30 am

    You would see what was happening on that planet when the light you have collected left the planet. 100 light years away and you would see what happened 100 years ago. A bigger telescopr only allows you to collect more light, not light that hasn’t got here yet! dmlex1

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