How far can The Hubble Space telescope see?

Question

In Light Years.

Answer 1

Hubble has picked up galaxies that are 10 billion light years away (and perhaps more). But the measure of a telescope is not how far it can see. It is how dim it can see and how much resolution it has. Hubble can see down to about 33rd magnitude. Each 5 magnitudes represent a dimming by a factor of 100 and magnitude 6 is the dimmest a human eye can see. The resolution of the Hubble is essentially at the theoretical level for a telescope of its size because it is above the atmosphere.

Answer 2

How far it can see and the farthest thing it has seen are two different things.

How far something can see depends on the specifications of the thing doing the seeing and the location and luminosity of the thing being seen. The most luminous thing in the known universe isn't visible to the naked eye.

Distant things can be seen two ways.
1. Using a telescope that collects enough light to make it readily visible to the human eye at any given moment.

2. Using a telescope with a camera that can be set for long exposures and collects and accumulates light over a long time to be viewed in the form of a photo at a later date.

The Hubble uses method #2. Many photos taken by the Hubble were done by taking multi-day exposures of the object. A larger telescope would be able to get the same photo in a shorter time.
So the farthest Hubble can see will depend on the above plus how long of a timed exposure the Hubble can take.

Answer 3

It can see exactly as far as you can with your unaided eyes, which is infinitely far. Light can travel any distance and reach either your eye or the Hubble telescope.

It isn't how far that is important, it is how dim and how small it can see. Something very big and bright can be seen at a very great distance, even with your unaided eye. Something very small and dim cannot be seen at a close distance, even with the Hubble telescope. You can easily see stars 100 light years away just by looking up at night. The Hubble telescope could not see a candle one tenth of a light year away and neither could you. But the Hubble could see a candle on the Moon, even though you couldn't.

That being said, the Hubble telescope has seen very bright galaxies many billions of light years away.

Answer 4

ANSWER: 13 billion light years

DETAILS:
Astronomical distances are tricky. If someone tells you 13.7 billion years, that's because the universe is 13.7 billion years old and that's the longest light can travel. But Light-Travel-Time (LTT), can be a missleading distance. For example, the most distant CONFIRMED object has a redshift Z of 7. It's LTT distance is 13 billion. But you see it when it was only a couple billion light years away from us. In other words, it looks like it's only 2 billion light years away (but it's really faint). That's called the angular distance. Galaxies closer to us NOW, look farther away. The farthest a galaxy looks is 5 billion light years. (That's a redshif Z of about 1.5.) That redshift Z 7 object is now 29 billion light years away. But we can't see what it looks like now. The theoretical max for the distance now in the observable universe is around 40 billion light years.

Answer 5

Using a technique to correct for what is known as "gravitational lensing", the Hubble has recently imaged galaxies that were formed less than 1 billion years after the big bang. To answer your question, this techniques has visualized objects up to 12.5 billion light-years away (that is, if they still exist!)

Answer 6

It can see 'end of the universe'. There is a very famous picture of it on any Hubble google site. I think it is called 'Ultra Deep Field' or something like that. It looks like you are looking at a group of stars until you take a real close look. Then you realize you are looking at galaxies.

Answer 7

HST has photographed galaxies up to 12.5 billion lightyears away. Radio telescopes cannot see anything, they record radio noise. Reminds me of a sick joke about showing silent movies to the blind and playing radios for the deaf. They have picked up radio noise from about as far as HST has photographed.

Answer 8

It can see as far as where stars due to space inflation have not exceeded the speed of light in reference to us. Presently that seems to be close to 13.7 Billion light years.

Answer 9

Simply click on this link and be amazed
http://www.merlin.ac.uk//topics/deepfield/maps/hubble12.jpg

Answer 10

It,s not a question of how far it can see, its how far back in time can it go