What I mean is this. Suppose that I am 20km far from the moon. I can see soil details, craters, etc. Then I move to 100km away from the moon. I look at the moon again and now I am unable to see the same level of details as before. Why?
Then comes the real question. We look at distant stars and planets using telescopes. I know that the current telescopes are not about enlarging pictures but gathering photons. But suppose we had at our disposal a telescope with infinite enlargement functionality. Would we be able to choose a planet, distant as hell and enlarge it to the point we could see its surface details or is detail lost forever as the light travels?
If it is lost, how it is lost?
# fantastic answers! THANKS!
In: Physics
The limit of your eye’s resolution is usually given as an angle.
Picture your eye at the center of an angle, like the point of the symbol <. Your eye is at the point, and imagine there is an object at the end of each arm of the “<” symbol.
The resolution of your eye is the closest those two objects can be together for you to still see them as two distinct objects (<) and not one (slightly larger) object.
The thing with angles is, the further you are from the point of the angle (your eye), the further the two objects are. So without changing the angle, you may be able to distinguish two objects 1 inch apart if they’re 10 yards away from you, but if they’re 100 yards away the arms of the angle are spread out so you’ll only be able to distinguish two objects if they’re more than, say, 10 inches apart.
So this means that if you’re looking at a bunch of bananas 1 foot away, you can clearly distinguish each banana because they’re further away than that minimum distance. But if you’re looking at the same bunch of bananas 1000 feet away, they’re now too close together for you to distinguish each banana. If your friend was holding a banana in each hand with his arms stretched out, you could distinguish them but if they’re right next to each other you may not be able to tell one banana from the other (it just looks like one yellow lump).
So that’s how detail is lost: up close, you may be able to see each individual needle on the branch of a pine tree, because up close they don’t need to be far apart to be able to tell them apart. But if you’re looking at a pine tree in the distance, they are now too close together to distinguish each needle. It all looks like one green object.
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