Suppose you were looking at our own solar system from a distance of 10 light years...?

Question

...What angular resolution would you need to see the Sun and Jupiter at distinct points of light?

What about Sun and Earth?

...What angular resolution would you need to see the Sun and Jupiter at distinct points of light?

What about the Sun and Earth?

Does it compare to the angular resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope?

Answer 1

By definition, a parsec is the distance where the Earth's orbit appears 1 arc second wide, so the radius of Earth's orbit would be 0.5 arc second at one parsec. 10 light years is 3 parsecs, so Earth's maximum separation from the Sun as seen from 10 light years away would be 1/3 of 0.5 or about 0.17 arc seconds. Jupiter is about 5 times that, or about 0.83 arc seconds. Not all that hard to see you say? But the Sun would be millions of times brighter than Earth or Jupiter. The real challenge is filtering out the glare of the Sun to see the planets, not the just resolving the distance.

Answer 2

10 light years is about 3 parsecs, so the Earth would be about 1 arcsecond from the Sun. As someone correctly stated, Jupiter is about five times this distance from the Sun so the separation would be about 5 arcseconds. Any decent telescope, even a top-end-of-the-market amateur one could resolve this distance, but you wouldn't see Jupiter, even with the Hubble, because its faint light would be glared out by the Sun. You'd have to use more complex methods to detect even our largest planet. Jupiter is about 1/1000 the mass of the sun and far enough away to give the Sun a noticeable wobble. So watching the Sun wobble or observing the periodic doppler shift of its spectrum caused by this wobble would be your best bet.

Answer 3

From Alpha Centauri, the maximum angular separation of Sun and Earth is about .35 second of arc.

So from 10 light years, you could just about divide that by 3.

Approx a tenth of a second of arc, or 1/36000th of a degree.

Jupiter is about 5 times as far from the sun as Earth, so its max angular separation would be half a second of arc, or about 1/7000th degree.

I am not sure what Hubble's power is in this respect, but I don't believe it would be possible for a Hubble 10 light years away to separate Jupiter from the sun.

I don't believe any extra-solar planets have been visibly identified. They are known only from their gravitational effect on their parent star.

Someone correct me if I am wrong on that last para. I might not be up to date.

Answer 4

There has been, to date, one confirmed image of an extrasolar planet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M1207b

Note that the orbital radius of 41 AU at 200 ly is 3.2 microradians
Jupiter is at 5.2 AU, which at 10 ly, equals 8.2 microradians
Hubble's resolution limit is about 0.53 microradians
Earth at 1 AU at 10 ly is 1.58 microradians

2M1207b is only about 100 times dimmer than its star. In contrast, our Sun is substantially brighter, relative to either Jupiter or Earth, so while the Hubble or the Very Large Telescope has the angular resolution, the dimness of the planets require extremely long exposure times, causing the image of the Sun to bloom, as well as the stray light from the Sun to swamp out the image any planets in orbit around the Sun.

Answer 5

A fiery question. The good idea of looking to the jupiter due to its size is
a clue. The two known systems of telescopic info do not include resolves.
The type of telescopes with resolves are first contact reflectors or photo
jetison information light fixes, and glass tubular refractions or frags of info.
Seeing is belieiving. What is unique is the simulation telescope that
takes all possible data and sets a history file onscreen. This is actually
adjusted and colored like a photo art. The more common style is to take
photographs of all premium data at points of mathematical collides of
atomic field data, or what we might call Pathical compounded complete.

Answer 6

It would probably look just like the Epsilon Eridani system. Epsilon Eridani's star is very similar to the sun, and also at that distance. It has a planetary system, of a Jupiterish mass planet and a Neptuneish mass planet...yet you cannot see them no matter how hard you try, being outshined in the parent star's glare. We only know of them by their gravitational effect on the parent star. All you could see would be the sun, and it wouldn't look much different than the Epsilon Eridani star does to us. Just a pinprick of light. Barely measureable radius by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Answer 7

We need the angle of inclination to see our solar system.First you confirm that all the planets around the sun rae in same plane or not.If they we need inclination if not we need inclination for some planets and one thing that what is the angle of your eyes and our solarsystem.

Answer 8

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