How far

ronbyrne2005

How far and clearly could a telescope orbiting earth see into space? I mean could it be made to see an earth sized planet light years a way. What are the limiting factors in telescopes allowin us to look into space.

Captain Chaos

We can already see Earth sized planets form light years away with Hubble, the planet just has to pass in front of it's parent star. The max theoritical limit of how far we can see will be limited by the speed at which the universe is expanding, its will begin to expand at such a rate or already has at extreme distance that light for there will never ever reach us.

ronbyrne2005

Captain Chaos wrote: »

We can already see Earth sized planets form light years away with Hubble, the planet just has to pass in front of it's parent star. The max theoritical limit of how far we can see will be limited by the speed at which the universe is expanding, its will begin to expand at such a rate or already has at extreme distance that light for there will never ever reach us.

I mean see the surface of such a planet clearly . I know exoplanets have been detected but only thru inference from the wobble of the local star.

Captain Chaos

Hubble as it is cannot see the surface of the Moon or Mars in any great detail but that's the way is is designed, it does an OK job on the gas giants though.

I highly doubt we could ever make a telescope in orbit that could see any exoplanets in the detail the LRO took of the Moon and the Mars orbiter of the Red planet.

The shear physical mechanics of making something like that possible would be mind boggling. You'd probably need something crazy like a reflecting mirror the size of the solar system with our understanding of current scope technology.

ronbyrne2005

is there a way of analysing light from a planet to see if signature of oxygen and other life related chemicals are being emitted?

jumpguy

Yup, that's what spectrometers are for (open for correction).