Celestia Forums

I have a question, if we have telescope powerful enough to see other galaxies, why dont we have any clear pictures of pluto yet?

Because even as far away as they are galaxies are very large and bright.
Pluto is very small and dark. If you look at most of the huble pictures taken inside the solar system you find them to look rather blury. There just isn't enough lite for hubble to get a good focus on pluto. This tends to make the Hubble slighty near sighted instead of its original problem of being far sighted. The only way we are going to see the real face of Pluto and Carron is to send a probe like the Pluto express. Its posible that one of these new super telescopes being built here on earth might give us a better look. Lets hope so.

Because Pluto is much smaller than a galaxy . . .

Pluto is roughly 2300km in diameter, while the disc of the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across. They're different by a factor of 5x10^14. Another way of putting it is that in order for the Milky Way to appear as small from Earth as Pluto, it would have to be 20 billion light years away--beyond the limit of the visible universe.

--Chris

ok, thanks!