Eli5 why is it so hard to get really good quality pictures in space or on other planets?
In: Physics
It’s not. Some of the best camera humans have ever invented are on spy satellites, space telescopes, and rovers.
What you’re seeing is the confluence of three main things.
1) Space is very far away and transmitting large amounts of data is hard and slow. What we see early on earth is usually a lower resolution *transmission*. The high resolution files are sent later when scientists decide which ones they want.
2) Space is very far away and it takes years to get anywhere. So the cameras are as good as they could make *several years ago*. They can’t carry the latest tech because they don’t have warp drive.
3) Almost all the places we visit and things we look at are farther away from the sun than us, so dimmer, so harder and slower to take really good photos. That’s light’s fault, not the camera.
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