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The best image ever of an exoplanet is now 36 pixels :) I wonder if we can apply Moore's law to this? Every 1.5 year the number of pixels doubles. So in 10 yea
by Aardwolf 12y ago
The best image ever of an exoplanet is now 36 pixels :)
I wonder if we can apply Moore's law to this? Every 1.5 year the number of pixels doubles. So in 10 years it will be 3600 pixels, an in 20 years 360k. Another 10 and the resolution needs to be so high that you'd have to fly to it to take the picture :)
- InclinedPlane 12y agoThe "pixels" are misleading. It isn't pixels of an image of a planet, it's pixels of the point spread function of the diffraction limited smear of the planet. Increasing the resolution of that image isn't going to result in being able to resolve the planet itself, it'll just show a smudgy smeary point of light in greater detail. In order to actually resolve the planet into real pixels we'll need much larger telescopes, likely outside of Earth's atmosphere. And we're a long way off from that.
- mapt 12y agoThis. It would be easier to identify this sort of thing to a layman as '0.000001 pixels, blurred over 36 pixels due to lack of optical telescope power'.
- jokoon 12y agodoes moore's law apply to astrophysics or optics ?
- rbanffy 12y agoWe can certainly derive a "law" analog to Moore's law about exoplanet resolving power, but I suspect it will be a much less reliable predictor than Moore's law.
- cmsmith 12y agoWhat is interesting to me is that 36 pixels is also about the size of the best image we have of Pluto, a [formerly known as] planet in our own solar system.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]