So the JW telescope can see billions of lightyears into the distance/past and see countless galaxies in the focal point of a grain of sand, but when it’s aimed at at Uranus or a closer planet, the photos are very low quality.
Why can’t a telescope that powerful capture a good image inside our own solar system?
I understand it sees different wavelengths to typical telescopes but why can’t it take a sharp photo of the light emitting from the planet that’s not blurry?
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Next time you are holding binoculars, test them at a distance of just a few feet (a meter) away from your face. Look sort of blurry? That’s because the lenses were designed to look at things further away, not super close.
If the James Webb was designed to “zoom in” on things that are millions of light years away, then anything in our solar system is considered very close (relatively).
For this same reason, many quality cameras have a “macro” mode so they can take pictures of closer things. But it still has limits.
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