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Videos @lemmy.world Otter @lemmy.ca 12mo ago

What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth? - Minute Earth are working together with xkcd to animate "What If" questions!

xkcd @lemmy.world threelonmusketeers @sh.itjust.works 9mo ago

What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth?

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Hubble is essentially a Keyhole satellite so I assume if they flipped it around we’d have really clear photos of earth similar to the one trump got in trouble for showing on live tv.
- Those spy satellites are focused at the distance of earth. Hubble is focused at infinity or near-infinity.
  
  You'd just get some really blurry images.
  
  Is focus to infinity that different for these types of scopes compared to a conventional camera which focuses to infinity after a couple hundred metres? I would have thought the draw back would be the focal lengths giving you a very small area in frame.
- Not really. Hubble is set up to image objects light years away and moving relatively slowly.
  
  Keyhole stats as set up to image the earth's surface that is only hundreds/thousands km away and moving quite fast.
  
  Two different missions would lead to two different designs.
  
  That would lead to different focal lengths not different designs completely. Both optical systems for HST and KH were designed by Perkin Elmer so I’ll stick with my first thought that they would be very similar in capabilities.

21 comments