Tl:dw Hubble is designed to look at objects really far away and isn’t calibrated for Earth or fast enough to track a single spot long enough for good exposure, so the earth would be blurry.
Now, if we had the ability to focus at earth distance with proper stabilization, what would we see?
earth
Yes but to what degree of magnification? Would we see a city, a street, a car, a person…?
I did some napkin math and came to about 3.5 miles of field of view of pointed at the earth.
Hubble is old enough that it only has a 1MP camera, so roughly 720p or 1280x720 pixels , so each pixel would represent about 15 feet if you’re generous. A back yard swimming pool would be like 4 pixels, 9 if your parents are rich.
This is a much better way of looking at it! Thanks!
Earth
Apparently you spinning in a chair if you have a skylight over it
I’m glad Randall has taken up the mantle of the great Cecil Adams. Someone had to.
But who will take the mantle of the terrible Scott Adams?
Oh cool, there’s an XKCD YouTube? Consider me subscribed!
Because I just did.
I didn’t know there was a YouTube channel for this series, I really enjoyed the book so this is a pleasant surprise
What a comforting note to end on…
The CIA literally gave NASA two satellite telescopes that are very powerful but aimed at earth.
NASA haven’t launched them yet, have they? Last I heard they were sitting in storage.
They were retired from CIA use and thus I figured in orbit, it I need to Google it.
Somewhat tangentially related but DSCOVR sits at a Lagrange point between the Sun and Earth and took pretty neat photos:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory
Those time lapse animations are super cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory#Animations
I had to read that, after an earlier thread today claimed Gore did nothing for the climate until after he lost his presidential bid …… that would have been great to post
