How do telescopes see so far into space? Since celestial bodies are thousands & millions of light years away, How can NASA telescopes capture an image of planets & galaxies that far?

Question

I quite frankly understand the concept of light years and how light has to travel before we (humans on earth) can process that image. For example, the sun that we see in the sky is actually the sun 8 minutes prior to when we were viewing it, because it takes 8 minutes for the light of the sun to travel to earth.

With that, how do these mega-telescopes work (Hubble and James Webb)? And does it mean we’ll never be able to see how planets and galaxies look in present time?

In: 15

Answer 1

They don’t see exoplanets… any visualization of planets is an artist illustration. Even with Hubble, images of Pluto were a barely a few pixels wide, no detail and that’s in our own solar system.

Galaxies are BIG and they give off a lot of light. So they can be seen more easily.