I read that the Hubble telescope could look 13.2 billion years back in time – what would it see if it turned 180 degrees and looked the other way?
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So here is something that needs to be explained so that you kind of get a better picture of what’s going on. When you use a telescope and look “back in time”, it’s not really looking back in time as people would think. Saying you’re checking out a star 5 billion light years away. What you see in the telescope the light given off is 5 billion years old, as that’s the time it took the light to travel to you. That’s why they say you are looking back 5 billion years.
Something like the Hubble telescope has the ability to look further than your standard telescope. The further you can look the further these objects are away which means the light takes longer to reach you.
There is no need to do a 180 degree turn to see the other way. The telescope orbits the earth going round and round, and it’s always pointing outwards. So it’s constantly working to give us a 360 degree view. Think of it like putting a camcorder on a lazy Susan and then spinning it. You’ll get a view of the room 360 degrees on the axis of the lazy Susan.
So turning the Hubble the other way would pretty much just show us pictures of earth honestly lol.
As far as whats out there? Basically the universe is expanding at a rapid speed. So it’s not like we will ever be able to see the edge of the universe. So whatever we see through the telescope is the light being shot at us from that direction. We have no way of seeing what is past the edge of the universe.
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