What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth? - Minute Earth are working together with xkcd to animate "What If" questions!
Submitted 11 months ago by otter@lemmy.ca to videos@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LSyizrk8-0
Submitted 11 months ago by otter@lemmy.ca to videos@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LSyizrk8-0
teft@startrek.website 11 months ago
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.
QuinceDaPence@kbin.social 11 months ago
Those spy satellites are focused at the distance of earth. Hubble is focused at infinity or near-infinity
them@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 11 months ago
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.
teft@startrek.website 11 months ago
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.