how are pictures taken from 10 million miles away from earth?

Question

i keep seeing picture from thousands of miles away from earth like of the solar system and wat not wondering if anyone knows how these are taken

i shud of clarified more really erm well i saw this on some site and thats what i mean really how are the pictures at the start taken
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html

Answer 1

Some of the pictures are taken from Earth-orbiting satellites such as the Hubble telescope. Others are taken from probes (Voyager: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ , Cassini,: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm, etc.) specifically sent on missions to record images of other planets.

ADDENDUM

Oh. Those pictures of "our galaxy" from 10M light-years are NOT of our galaxy. They are either pictures of a similar spiral galaxy (Andromeda?) or are artists' conceptions.

Answer 2

Well, either that the bible is wrong if you want to take it literally. Some people think that the bible is not meant to be taken literally when it comes to time. Perhaps at least the creation story in Genesis is not literal. On the other side, it is very hard to say that science could be wrong on this topic. The science used to date distant stars isn't flawless but it is rather rudimentary and if there aren't really stars millions of light years away then that would mean that we made a huge mistake earlier on and that many many things are wrong. It just isn't very likely. Also, someone I believe tried to say that "light years are shorter than regular years" or something. That is nonsensical since a light year is a measurement of distance, not time... although... it is dependant on time. But the writer of the question seems to know the difference, so no biggie.

Answer 3

10 million MILES is a tiny distance astronomically, only about a tenth of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. We have explored this part of our solar system with many probes which have made images.

The web site you're referring to is talking about distances 10 million LIGHT YEARS away which is much much greater. These are drawings, artist's concepts. Certainly we can photograph objects 10 million light years away, even 10 billion light years away, but we don't have pictures of our own solar system or galaxy from these enormous distances.

Answer 4

Most are taken by robotic cameras on space probes; then the pictures are transmitted back towards Earth.

These "probes" are unmanned. They are essentially just rocket motors, with a few cameras, computers, sensors, batteries, and a radio transmitter strapped on.

The farthest that humans have ever traveled from earth was during the moon landings back in the sixties. Some of the famous photos of the earth and moon were taken with simple handheld SLR cameras, carried by the Apollo astronauts.

This is probably the most famous picture of the earth, taken by Michael Collins of Apollo 11, I believe:
http://moonpans.com/prints/a8earthrise.jpg

~WOMBAT

Answer 5

During the first war in Iraq the American weather satellite had its orbit changed from a circular orbit to an elliptical one.While the satellite was closest to the Earth in its elliptical orbit it happened to be over Iraq and thousands of images were captured including images of troop movements.These images could detect tank movements of inches.They were so clear that you could actually read the headlines of an Iraqi newspaper.This is the equivalent of taking a photograph of someone in Scotland from the top of the Eiffel Tower.The reason that they can be so clear is that the atmosphere is densest at the Earths surface and rapidly gets thinner as you travel away .The thicker the atmosphere the more distortion .Hope this gives you some insight.
edit: I don,t know why someone has given me a thumbs down for this answer,it is completely true and I am only trying to give you a practical,if basic example of how and why it works.

Answer 6

The images that we see from that distance are re-created by adding all the (infra-red to gamma ray) radio signatures together from a prefocused point in space and decoding them into an image that we can comprehend. It's a bit like how tv is transmitted by signals and you tv decodes the signal for you to be able to see.
To prefocus a given point, one needs to know the speed of light and send at least three signals into space where the "beams" would cross. That would be a start point for referencing a given point in space, then a sweep would commence to "view" what is in that area, Any signals that "bounce" will show up as a radio signal that is then decoded to be veiwed... Hope that helps.

Answer 7

Robotic probes. Voyager, Pioneer, etc. are some of the probes speeding away from our solar system at this very minute.

EDIT: The pictures in the link you described are DRAWINGS, not PHOTOGRAPHS.

Answer 8

With the Hubble space craft, they use a couple of very large mirrors. Read more here:

http://hubble.nasa.gov/
http://hubble.nasa.gov/technology/optics.php
http://hubble.nasa.gov/operations/capture-image.php

Answer 9

any pics you see of the milky way galaxy are not really the milky way as no probe of ours has ever been to a distance to take a picture of our galaxy as yet

Answer 10

Those are mostly drawings or paintings, not photographs.