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
Cameras are made up of grids of little light sensitive squares. If light hits anywhere in the square it gets measured and makes that spot in the image lighter.
Stars are much much much much smaller than one square, but they put out so much light that it’s still enough to register as a white spot in the image.
So we know the star is actually somewhere within that square (pixel) but there is no way to know where inside of the square it is. It’s a bit like seeing the lights on in a house miles away. You can see clearly that their light turned on so someone is home, but your eyes can only see a spot of light turn on and off.
Even if you are many miles away you can see a light turn on and off but you can’t actually make out any shapes.
We can make a lot of very useful observations about a house miles away, we can see the light’s color, is it a blue led, is it a warm incandescent light, is it a greenish fluorescent? We can even infer that someone is walking around in front of a window if the light level dips. We can communicate using the window by flicking the switch on and off to send ~~Moore’s~~ Morse code.
But ultimately our understanding has no 2 dimensional resolution. There is lots of ways to study a point of light but the stars are still just points.
The surface of Mars can be studied in a similar fashion as the cosmos are studied inspecting Mars as a single point of colored light, but if you want a picture to hang on the wall you need to get closer or build a far larger telescope.
As to why we get pictures of Nebula from earth but not clear pictures of Mars, the answer is that while they are very far away they are so immensely large that the distance makes them appear bigger. It’s much like how how a billboard across the street can look larger than a stamp in your hand. It’s easier to photograph the billboard because it appears larger.
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