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I believe his intent, especially with the word "purportedly", was so infer that the proposed system had amazing abilities, less than it was intended to be a per
by burnte 6y ago
I believe his intent, especially with the word "purportedly", was so infer that the proposed system had amazing abilities, less than it was intended to be a perfectly accurate description.
- 0_____0 6y agoI agree that it wasn't intended to be literal fact, just figured I'd take the opportunity to flex my mediocre optical systems knowledge. :p
- jerzmacow 6y agoCould you describe what size of optical telescope you'd need to put in space to read the date on a dime? I'm very curious
- 0_____0 6y agoCheck out this chart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system#/media/File:Diffraction_limit_diameter_vs_angular_resolution.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system#/me... I would guess that you'd need 0.25mm resolution, which at 200km would require 250microarcseconds angular res, which doesn't even register on that graph at any wavelength or size of telescope lol edit: this is a very 'spherical cow' analysis. i'm pretty sure that atmospheric effects will kill your ability to image stuff like this well before angular resolution will.
- aasasd 6y agoThat chart is beautiful. While not really Tufte's dream of ‘a ton of measurements in little ink’, that chart shows me everything I'd want to know about this one relation. Also, perhaps there's a need for a better naming system than one that produces ‘Extremely Large Telescope’.
- 0_____0 6y agoIt's a bit of a joke as well, hence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telescope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telesco...
- titzer 6y agoImpressive! I was going to comment going on gut feeling from layman's understanding of resolving power of optics, but glad to see someone who knows more nail it.