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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The answer is simple: the planets are much smaller than distant galaxies, to a degree that their size is a larger factor than distance in determining how large they appear in a telescope. Planetary diameters typically measure in the thousands of kilometers, whereas objects like galaxies or nebulae are measured in light-years—and a single light-year is almost ten trillion kilometers. Nearby planets may be thousands or millions of times closer than distant galaxies, but those galaxies are *trillions* of times larger than planets, meaning the size factor dominates.
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