Originally posted by drevill
I dont know much about space, science etc. so hopefully you can help me, sorry if this comes across as stupid.
If hubble can see so far away why dont they use it on the nearby planets?
get a good close up sot of thing take a look at the Face and all that stuff on mars?
Sorry told you i was thicker than a Rhino kebab
Ok, here goes...
The Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4 m wide. Not as big as many ground-based telescopes, but being in space it doesn't have to contend with the
atmosphere.
Hubble's WFPC2 is the telescope's main camera. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) is behind most of the fantastic Hubble pictures. And by
the way, it doesn't use film to record images. Instead, it collects information from stars and galaxies to make photographs with the help of four
pieces of high-tech circuitry called Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs).
That said, Hubble’s resolution is 0.06 arc-seconds. So looking at the Earth from a distance of 600 km, it can resolve objects as small as 30 cm.
Looking at the Moon from 375,000 km, it can resolve objects as small as 360 m. So, sorry, you can't see those moon buggies and flags!!
And looking at Mars, 75 million km distant at conjunction, objects as small as 36 km wide can be made out. So that’s not too good to see that
'face' on Mars, what?
Cheers!
[edit on 15-4-2008 by mikesingh]