How do we get such detailed pictures of planets and space?

Question

I know we get them through massive telescopes…. But how do they capture images so far away? How do they work?

In: 3

Answer 1

Most of the super-sharp super-detailed photos you see of planets were not taken from telescopes on Earth. They were taken by relatively normal cameras attached to interplanetary space probes that we launched from Earth and flew close to that planet.

Even the best planet photos from the biggest Earth-based telescopes (and even space telescopes that orbit near Earth) look terrible compared to the images sent back from space probes like Voyager, Cassini-Huygens, etc. The further the planet, the worse images we can get from Earth. Objects like Pluto show up as pixellated blobs on even the most advanced telescopes.