Will Ultra Advanced Telescopes Enable Real-Time Planetary Surface Imaging?

[stany]

will they ever make telescopes where the image is powerful enough to check out the surfaces of planets (real time) so we can see if there's life on them and also can see into other galaxys and maybe even pass through black holes and stuff? (not the actual telescope - i mean the image)

we woudnt have to go into space then! (well we would but wed already know what's out there and where to go etc)

 

[mjacobsca]

Since no form of radiation can escape from a black hole, we won't be able to see into one, ever. Perhaps in the future, particles will be discovered that are not affected by gravity, and they might be able to provide some insights as to what happens onside one, but they would probably not interact with any other matter either, and hence might not give us any additional info.

Regarding viewing other planets, that all depends on the amount of light we receive, and the arc-size of the light. Recently, a photo was published that showed an exoplanet in the image itself, but like the sun in the image, it was just a pinpoint of light. In all practicality, we will probably learn more from studying the spectral signatures of exoplanets than from minuscule images. Host suns totally obscure inner planets, and dominate any light they may send out, making any observation incredibly difficult. Perhaps in the future our telescopes may be refined enough to image a solar disc, but viewing a planet surface MAY never be achievable given the tiny arcsize of the planet. But anything is possible! Who knows what the future brings!

 

[Drakkith]

Remember that telescopes work by gather light. They use large mirrors or lenses, anywhere from a couple of inches in diameter to several meters, to gather light and focus it down to a small point. You must have light coming to your telescope in order to collect that light. Since no light comes from black holes we cannot see through it with a telescope.

Also, since we are waiting on light to get here, it takes a very long time in our everyday scale for light to reach us from a distant star or planet. The CLOSEST star system to us is 4.2 light years away. That means it takes light over 4 years to get here. When we look at those stars we are seeing 4 years into the past, and it only gets worse the further the star is. There is no such thing as "real time".

 

[russ_watters]

The resolution of a telescope is limited by the diameter of the telescope and wavelength of the light as per the laws of optics. That's a difficult, though not impossible problem to overcome when trying to image objects far away at high resolution: You can hook multiple telescopes together to simulate a larger telescope using interferometry. On Earth where the distances are easy to calibrate and using radio waves which have a long wavelength and thus are more "forgiving" of minor errors in calibration it's been done for some time. See the Very Large Array. To do it with visible light and image is more difficult, but ultimately it may be possible to use satellites orbiting on opposite sides of the sun for a very long "baseline" and very high resolution.