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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Unfortunately we don’t have a telescope powerful enough yet to directly image a planet in another solar system with any detail. But there’s some we can image as simple smudges of light. Here’s a list in Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets)
Planets are absolutely tiny. They are like motes of dust floating in space relative to other astronomical objects we can see. I don’t think we’ll be looking up close at extrasolar planet surfaces with a telescope for some time. For perspective here’s maybe the best image we have of the surface of another star: [https://phys.org/news/2018-01-astronomers-images-surface-giant-star.html](https://phys.org/news/2018-01-astronomers-images-surface-giant-star.html)
That star is 350 times the diameter of the sun and you can see how little detail there is in the image.
We do point telescopes at the moon though and those images are very detailed. There’s plenty if you search for them. Even a simple pair of binoculars can make out impressive detail on the moon. Of course the moon is only 300,000km away.
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