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Resolving Power of Telescope

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The Hubble Space Telescope has a mirror diameter of 2.4m. Suppose the telescope is used to photograph stars near the center of our galaxy, 30,000 light years away, using red light with a wavelength of 650nm.

a) What's the distance (in km) between two stars that are marginally resolved? The resolution of a reflecting telescope is calculated exactly the same as for a refracting telescope.

b) For comparison, what is this distance as a multiple of the distance of Jupiter from the sun?

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The expert examines resolving power for a telescope. A step by step solution provided.

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a) Resolving power of a telescope is its ability to show distinctly the images of two distant objects lying closely. The angular resolution of the telescope is measured by the angle dθ subtended at its objective by the two distant objects (say stars) whose images are just seen as ...

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