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I once listened to a lecture/book from Neil deGrasse Tyson and he mentioned that for distanced over 500 lightyears, it is pretty much impossible to see any kind
by deletes 13y ago
I once listened to a lecture/book from Neil deGrasse Tyson and he mentioned that for distanced over 500 lightyears, it is pretty much impossible to see any kind of artificial light from a planet. The telescope would have to be kilometers in diameter. I think the main problem is the local star and its brightness.
Similar information: http://www.space.com/13514-alien-city-artificial-lights-extraterrestrial-planets.html http://www.space.com/13514-alien-city-artificial-lights-extr...
Interesting question regarding telescope limits: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/17881/is-there-a-limit-to-the-resolving-power-of-a-mirror-telescope/18276#18276 http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/17881/is-there-a-...
- EthanHeilman 13y agoIs building a Kilometer sized telescopes really that difficult? What about a formation of satellites. Impossible is a pretty strong word to use for something that is possible but economically infeasible given current technology. I'd be curious to NDT reasoning on the subject.
- akiselev 13y agoThere have been a bunch of proposals for telescope satellite arrays and there are a few in progress like ARReST at Caltech & Surrey (which uses cube sats)
- sliverstorm 13y agoThe Hubble orbits at about 600km. Getting something many km in size to orbit the earth properly might be difficult.