NASA had plans to build a space based interferometer optical telescope called the TPF--terrestrial planet finder. It would have had the power to resolve surface features on earth sized exosolar planets (planets orbitting other stars).
The Keppler mission, which launches next year, will be able to detect earth sized worlds using transits (the planet passes between the star and us). It will monitor roughly 100,000 stars, but will lack the resolution of the TPF project, which was suspended due to lack of funding. Far better for us, apparently, to wage unprovoked war here on earth than to advance our knowledge of the universe.
We currently know of more than 200 planets beyond our solar system. All of these orbit stars within a few hundred light years of us. There are some 200 billion stars in our galaxy, all within 100,000 light years of us.
As for planets orbitting stars in other galaxies--they are just too far away. Andromeda, our sister galaxy, is 2 million light years away. And it is about the closest.
2007-03-18 06:48:16
·
answer #1
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
Two main reasons:
1) Planets are too small compared with such a huge distant objects. Andromeda galaxy, for instance, can be seen naked eye and is wider than a planet in the sky. Nevertheless, we have nice images of planets from Hubble telescope. Just take a look at
http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/Mars/mars_hst.html
Hubble could see even a tornado on Mars:
http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/Mars/Pics/9922w.jpg
2) What is more important, planets do not emit light, they just reflect solar light, so telescopes receive much less light from planets than from light emitting sources as are stars and galaxies. We have observed deep sky with radio waves, X rays, etc.
3) We do not exactly see external planets. We just infere its presence from the variation of the movement of their central star. Sometimes due to the variation of the light of the star if the planet passes in front of it.
2007-03-18 03:13:23
·
answer #2
·
answered by Jano 5
·
0⤊
0⤋
i'm no longer particular what guns you're speaking about, there is not any thanks to "turn off" a gun or RPG remotely, they're basically mechanical instruments. And in any journey, hi-tech weaponry is about forking over money to the fingers market, the vast form 2 market on earth, very few of those forms of issues has a lot functional use. there is always a lo-tech counterpart to hi-tech wizardry. huge sums of money replaced into spent coming up radar guided guns that could want to 0 in on mortars and damage them correct once they fired, each each now and then earlier the mortar shells even landed. Did that quit human beings from making mortar attacks, on the fairway Zone case in point? Nope, they basically set up the mortars, that are low-cost and uncomplicated to make, and use a 5$ egg timer to fireside the mortars after the team has appropriately vacated the realm. that's no longer what guns one has, that's how one makes use of them. And for the most section undemanding undemanding guns are a procedures more beneficial low-cost than their hi-tech opposite numbers. bear in options, some adult men in caves used field cutters to attack the Pentagon and take down the dual Towers. sure, some thing may be finished. we are able to pull our troops out of a rustic the position they weren't in any respect welcome and performance no corporation being, and enable the Iraqis address their personal transformations. :)
2016-12-02 04:18:50
·
answer #3
·
answered by kasahara 4
·
0⤊
0⤋
Present day technology of telescopes is not enough to observe such small details.
to have that capacity optical telescopes need to be about 20 times larger than what we have now, furthermore, due to the obscuring effect of our atmosphere these telescopes need to be placed in space, in vacuum.
2007-03-18 03:26:33
·
answer #4
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋
Although we can see great distances, we cannot see with a lot of resolution. We can see things like nebulas and super novas, but the fine details of close-up photos of a planet are not possible.
2007-03-18 02:04:40
·
answer #5
·
answered by physandchemteach 7
·
0⤊
0⤋
Think of the size of the objects outside our galaxy you are looking at. You are comparing stars in the milk way to star clusters in outside of it. 100,000,000 miles in diameter to objects twenty to fifty thousand light years in diameter. The objects are so much larger they are visible.
B
2007-03-18 02:19:35
·
answer #6
·
answered by Bacchus 5
·
0⤊
0⤋