Why Can We Still See.....?

Question

the crators on the moon with a telescope if the moon is like 3 to 4 days away from earth? the same with Saturn, isnt that planet like 8 years away?

i brought saturn up becuase i was trying to give an example of how much more we can see things even though they are far away, thats all im asking

Answer 1

Its 3 or 4 days away from Earth by rocket ship, but its only a few seconds away at light speed (which is the speed the light reflected from the moon travels to our eyes).
Saturn is 8 years away by slow rocket ship, but its only about 76 minutes away at light speed.

The craters on the moon are visible to us because most are large enough to be resolved in even a small telescope.
To easily view the rings of Saturn, most people need a telescope that has at least 20X magnification. Even at that relatively low magnification the rings (and Cassini Division) are visible.

Answer 2

1. the moon and Saturn are distances away from Earth.
distance = rate x time
so, when you say that the moon is 3 to 4 days away or saturn is 8 y away, that's meaningful only if you are assuming that you are travelling at some given speed.
2. an important point is that we can only see things when the light from them reaches us, so we see the moon and saturn a bit delayed because it takes light a little time to reach us from these celestial objects. however, light travels very fast, so this delay is only significant if we are talking about things much further away. some things visible with a telescope are seen by us as they were millions and even billions of years ago.

Answer 3

First of all, the time from the earth to the moon would depend on your speed. But, at the speed that the Apollo craft traveled, the distance (about 240,000 miles, or about 385,000 kilometers) took about 4 days to travel.

As to the craters, the ones we can see with a small telescope are actually very big, some of them hundreds of miles across. The moons of Saturn we can only see with large telescopes. For instance, the Hubble Space telescope is plenty big enough to see the craters clearly. :)

Answer 4

Very high-powered telescopes. If you get the opportunity to go to an observatory, ask to see the moon landing descent stages and rovers and experiments like the spectrographs and laser reflectors. With the high-tech telescopes, you will be able to see these remnants of the Apollo Program. It is really cool.
With Saturn, I once saw the planet and its rings plus several of its' moons - they were lined up in a row emanating outwards into space. Really 'far out'!

Answer 5

It may take our space craft that long to reach the Moon or Saturn, but the speed of light which we see travels at 300,000 km per second. It takes a second and a half for moon light to hit our telescope lense. It takes about 1.5 hours for light to leave Saturn before we can see its image.


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Answer 6

Distance does not matter;size matters. The craters you see on the moon are the size of a small town or bigger.
Saturn is approximately 74000 miles in diameter.
If you look at Saturn through almost any amateur telescope it is still pretty tiny.

Answer 7

the reason we never landed on the moon is because its not really there! its just a big picture that they drag across the sky every night. its all done out of hollywood. thats why you can see it so well, the whole thing is made up.

Answer 8

"3 or 4 days" is the distance it would take to travel in a spaceship. light is a little faster than that (about 299,995 km/s faster!)



but your question seems to assume that the craters on the moon would be covered up after 3 or 4 days?



and i don't even know why you bring up Saturn

Answer 9

The moon is only 1.5 light-seconds away.

Saturn is about 1.5 light hours away.

can't understand your problem. What you see has nothing to do with how long it takes current probes to get there.

Answer 10

We see light.
There is light bouncing off the moon.
There is light bouncing off saturn.
There is nothing in space to stop the light so eventually what comes in our direction gets here and we see it.