How far away can the best modern telescopes see? and...?

Question

How far away can we currently see and how long ago did the light leaving those places leave?
Another question: As our tools become more advanced, will it ever be possible to see so far away that we can actually see far back enough in time to witness the universe's begining?

Answer 1

That all depends on what version of cosmology you prefer.
On massive scales, distance becomes a bit fuzzy, depending on how you want to work it out. This is why astronomers use the concept of 'redshift' which is a measure of how fast the object is receding from us.

And as for seeing right back to the beginning - no. Before about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe was opaque to radiation. It's that era of recombination which we now see as the microwave background.

Answer 2

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken pictures that are 10-12 billion light years away. It is "seeing" light that left its sources 10-12 billion years ago.

I doubt we'll ever see the beginning of the universe but we should be able to do better that 10-12 billion light years when we send the Webb telescope into space to replace the Hubble.

Answer 3

Just a note of info (except for the curvature of the earth,) strike a match on a sidewalk in london, and the palomar telescope can see it.

Answer 4

about 2mm, until you take the lens cap off....

Answer 5

Telescope
An instrument used to collect, measure, or analyze electromagnetic radiation from distant objects. A telescope overcomes the limitations of the eye by increasing the ability to see faint objects and discern fine details. In addition, when used in conjunction with modern detectors, a telescope can “see” light that is otherwise invisible. The wavelength of the light of interest can have a profound effect on the design of a telescope. See also Electromagnetic radiation; Light.

For many applications, the Earth's atmosphere limits the effectiveness of larger telescopes. The most obvious deleterious effect is image scintillation and motion, collectively known as poor seeing. Atmospheric turbulence produces an extremely rapid motion of the image resulting in a smearing. On the very best nights at ideal observing sites, the image of a star will be spread out over a 0.25-arcsecond seeing disk; on an average night, the seeing disk may be between 0.5 and 2.0 arcseconds.

The upper atmosphere glows faintly because of the constant influx of charged particles from the Sun. The combination of the finite size of the seeing disk of stars and the presence of airglow limits the telescope's ability to see faint objects. One solution is placing a large telescope in orbit above the atmosphere. In practice, the effects of air and light pollution outweigh those of airglow at most observatories in the United States. See also Airglow.

There are basically three types of optical systems in use in astronomical telescopes: refracting systems whose main optical elements are lenses which focus light by refraction; reflecting systems, whose main imaging elements are mirrors which focus light by reflection; and catadioptric systems, whose main elements are a combination of a lens and a mirror. The most notable example of the last type is the Schmidt camera.

Astronomers seldom use large telescopes for visual observations. Instead, they record their data for future study. Modern developments in photoelectric imaging devices are supplanting photographic techniques for many applications. The great advantages of detectors such as charge-coupled devices is their high sensitivity, and the images can be read out in a computer-compatible format for immediate analysis. See also Charge-coupled devices.

Light received from most astronomical objects is made up of radiation of all wavelengths. The spectral characteristics of this radiation may be extracted by special instruments called spectrographs. See also Astronomical spectroscopy.

As collectors of radiation from a specific direction, telescopes may be classified as focusing and nonfocusing. Nonfocusing telescopes are used for radiation with energies of x-rays and above (x-ray, gamma-ray, cosmic-ray, and neutrino telescopes). Focusing telescopes, intended for nonvisible wavelengths, are similar to optical ones (solar, radio, infrared, and ultraviolet telescopes), but they differ in the details of construction. See also Cerenkov radiation; Cosmic rays; Gamma-ray astronomy; Infrared astronomy; Neutrino astronomy; Radio telescope; Sun; Ultraviolet astronomy; X-ray telescope.

The 5-m (200-in.) Hale telescope at Palomar Mountain, California, was completed in 1950. The primary mirror is 5 m in diameter with a 1.02-m (40-in.) hole in the center.

The 4-m (158-in.) Mayall reflector at the Kitt Peak National Observatory was dedicated in 1973. The prime focus has a field of view six times greater than that of the Hale reflector. An identical telescope was subsequently installed at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, in Chile.

The mirrors for these traditional large telescopes were all produced using the same general methodology. A large, thick glass mirror blank was first cast; then the top surface of the mirror was laboriously ground and polished to the requisite shape. The practical and economical limit to the size of traditional mirror designs was nearly reached by the 6-m (236-in.) telescope in the Caucasus Mountains, Russia. Newer telescopes have been designed and built that use either a number of mirrors mounted such that the light collection by them is brought to a common focus, or lightweight mirrors in computer-controlled mounts.

The Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, completed in 1993, is the largest of the segmented mirror telescopes to be put into operation. The telescope itself is a fairly traditional design. However, its primary mirror is made up of 36 individual hexagonal segments mosaiced together to form a single 10-m (386-in.) mirror. Electronic sensors built into the edges of the segments monitor the relative positions of the segments, and feed the results to a computer-controlled actuator system.

In 1989, the European Southern Observatory put into operation their New Technology Telescope. The 3.58-m (141-in.) mirror was produced by a technique known as spin-casting, where molten glass is poured into a rotating mold.

Worldwide efforts are under way on a new generation of large, ground-based telescopes, using both the spin-casting method and the segmented method to produce large mirrors. The Gemini project of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories is building twin 8.1-m (319-in.) telescopes, Gemini North on Mauna Kea, Hawaii (1999), and Gemini South on Cerro Pachon in Chile (2000).

The Very Large Telescope (VLT), operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranel, Chile, consists of four 8-m (315-in.) “unit” telescopes with spin-cast mirrors. The light from the four telescopes is combined to give the equivalent light-gathering power of a 16-m (630-in.) telescope. The last of the four telescopes began collecting scientific data in September 2000.

The ability of large telescopes to resolve fine detail is limited by a number of factors. Distortion due to the mirror's own weight causes problems in addition to those of atmospheric seeing. The Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, (HST) with an aperture of 2.4 m (94 in.), was designed to eliminate these problems. The telescope operates in ultraviolet as well as visible light, resulting in a great improvement in resolution not only by the elimination of the aforementioned terrestrial effects but by the reduced blurring by diffraction in the ultraviolet. See also Diffraction; Resolving power (optics).

Soon after the telescope was launched in 1990, it was discovered that the optical system was plagued with spherical aberration, which severely limited its spatial resolution. After space-shuttle astronauts serviced and repaired the telescope in 1993, adding what amounted to eyeglasses for the scientific instruments, the telescope exceeded its prelaunch specifications for spatial resolution. Subsequent servicing missions replaced instruments with newer technology. See also Space Telescope, Hubble.

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