How do we have the equipment to picture and see cosmos and stars millions of light years away, but can’t just zoom-in to examine and view the surfaces of our interplanetary planets in the solar system?
In: Physics
Scale due to Distance.
You can take a moderately good picture of Jupiter or Saturn or Venus from Earth. But trigonometry mandates that you get less resolution the further something is away. Example: You can clearly see your thumbnail, but may have trouble distinguishing the thumb of a person down the street. The farther something is away, then the fewer pixels/receptors catching its photons. Those cosmic things you see in pictures are massive stars, nebulae, galaxies, and clusters, which are many orders of magnitude larger than a planet.
A great example of this is happening right now. Wake up just before sunrise tomorrow (in July 2020) and go outside to see Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter (and some of its Galilean moons) stretched across the sky. The are all brighter than the stars (which are in our own galaxy). In that same sky are many many many galaxies and nebulae and other wonders that are so far away that they seem relatively microbial in size (as well as being fairly red-shifted).
To be fair, there are now some pretty awesome pictures of the local planets.
[Mercury](https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/image/mercury.jpg) [Venus](https://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Venus-imaged-by-Magellan.jpg) [Mars](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/683_6453_mars-globe-valles-marineris-enhanced-full2.jpg) [Jupiter](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/images/wallpaper/PIA07784-1920×1200.jpg) [Saturn](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/17549_Saturn_Glutton_For_Punishment_Mosaic_Watermark.jpg) [Uranus](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/potw1714a.jpg) [Neptune](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/images/wallpaper/PIA02245-1920×1200.jpg) … and even [Pluto](https://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/wp-content/uploads/sites/253/2015/12/PressImageContext_12-10-15.jpg)
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