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GMoromisato ◴[] No.44401068[source]
In case anyone is wondering, we are (sadly) very far from getting an image of this planet (or any extra-solar planet) that is more than 1 pixel across.

At 110 light-years distance you would need a telescope ~450 kilometers across to image this planet at 100x100 pixel resolution--about the size of a small icon. That is a physical limit based on the wavelength of light.

The best we could do is build a space-based optical interferometer with two nodes 450 kilometers apart, but synchronized to 1 wavelength. That's a really tough engineering challenge.

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1. throw0101c ◴[] No.44403929[source]
> At 110 light-years distance you would need a telescope ~450 kilometers across to image this planet at 100x100 pixel resolution--about the size of a small icon.

Or use two (or more) telescopes that are 450km apart:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis

* https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7852