Theoretically if I was 66 million light years away from earth and had a telescope strong enough would I be able to see the dinosaurs if I faced it towards earth and nothing was obstructing my view?
In: Physics
The Milky Way galaxy [is 100,000 light years side to side](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/a5Hk4VNl3I8/hqdefault.jpg). Ten to a million light years. Your telescope is 660 galaxies away. That’s a long way.
You’re looking for a handful of photons, guessing where Earth was before 66Myears of moving, and trying to ignore the mass of photons from the trillions of stars in the sky.
Worse, trying to point your telescope at the Sun, then angling it *just a tiny amount* so you’re ignoring [all the masses of photons from the Sun](https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1edud3j/i_combined_over_100000_images_of_the_sun_captured/) and only looking at the ones reflecting from Earth, which is right by the Sun. And not even the ones reflecting from the bright ice at the North/South poles, or the clouds, but the ones coming from between the clouds. That’s some high precision pointing.
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