Thread: Important question about hubbles resolution.

Why is it when hubble can take these gordious pictures of the edge of the known universe with exeptional clarity. But when it comes to our own milkyway, and saturn or jupiter or pluto, they get just some pixels in resolution.
Compared to pictures of the brim of the universe,,we should have been able to have enourmous clear pictures of our own planets etc..
Can anyone help me in finding this out?

G'day thermaltake

This link mybe of iterets to you

Hubble site
Behind the pictures
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/

For the Deep Field Survey, Hubble was pointed at the same patch of sky for something like one million minutes. Although this sounds long, galaxies don't do much in a million minutes. Planets do. An image of a spinning planet would
just be a blur after this length of time and the moons of the gas giants would be slowly orbitting by, causing distortions. Also, pretty much anyone with access to a backyard telescope can look at the nearby planets, so Hubble was really not designed for that kind of mission.

Arch2008 is correct - the Hubble takes pictures of things that are very far away by using REALLY long exposure times. It can take weeks or even months to get enough exposure time for a good Hubble image. You can do that with things that are far away because they are basically stationary with respect to your telescope. If you try that with something in the solar system, the planet (or whatever) that you are looking at will move around (both through space and on its own axis of rotation) while you are trying to take the picture, and screw things up.

Very nice answers. Now i know more than last time i wrote here

If there is other things to add, you are all free to do so after this message