I recently saw a photo somebody posted of a galaxy 50 million light years away. I have always wondered, why doesn’t he point it at the moon or even a planet 10 light years away and see the surface up close? We might see water or certain organisms. I have yet to see a picture like that in my lifetime. Thanks in advance for the answer.
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The galaxy 50 million light years away is proportionally wayyyyy bigger than the coin on the moon
A coin on the moon is trying to see a 2 cm wide object at 400,000 km. Lets scale that up a bit and its equivalent to trying to see something 473 kilometers wide at 1 lightyear, or 23,650 kilometers wide at 50 light years.
Seeing a star that’s a few million km in diameter at 50 light years is closer to seeing a good sized rock (1.2 meters) on the moon than a coin, and generally we’re looking at galaxies which are thousands to millions of lightyears across so its more equivalent to just seeing the moon at all.
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