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> How big of a space telescope would we need to see this planet in any actual detail?

Impossibly big. I'm sorry.



From the link 'evilduck posted, it seems that's big indeed, but possibly big.

240km is a big thing, but within the realm of possibility; also I'm personally hoping someone will invent some magic mathematical trick around phased arrays or whatever, and cut that size by an order of magnitude or two :).


240km is also what's required to resolve a feature no smaller than 100km across. I'm no mathematician and I am not equipped at the moment to pretend to be one, but to resolve a feature an order of magnitude smaller, I suspect you'd need a much larger instrument.


If I did the math correctly, it turns out to be ~2400km for 10km across (changing 100 to 10 in the eq). This could very easily be wrong as I only glanced through the comment. Think of it as Kirkian mathematics.


I would file 240km under very do-able. It's nothing like, say, a solar system sized particle accelerator.


That simple? Well jeez, I don't know what I was even worried about. :D




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