(Most definitely not a science person here). Are we able to see the surface of other planets (besides Mars)
Go easy on the non-science girl. :)
Which ones? And, why or why not?
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With a telescope, etc. It’s okay It’s an interesting question.
@Mama_Cakes If you’re in a place without light pollution think about a decent telescope. or contact your local high school astronomy class. They’ll love having a good spot.
Generally, the larger the light-gathering area of the lens (for a refractive telescope) or mirror (reflective telescope) the greater detail you will be able to see, whatever your target.
Very large mirrors are much more feasible than glass lenses of comparable size, so reflective telescopes have taken over from the more familiar refractive design at the forefront of astronomy for some time now. The second-largest earth-bound optical telescopes are the twin, 10-meter, segmented-mirror telescopes of the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Here is a gallery of images they have taken of objects within our own solar system, mostly the gas giants, and most in infrared (longer wavelengths of light than red which we cannot see with our own eyes).
A space telescope has a clearer view than an earth-bound telescope as it doesn’t have to deal with atmospheric disturbance. Hubble’s mirror is only 2.4 meters compared to Keck’s ten, but here you can see some nice images of Mars and the gas giants it has taken. By combining multiple images together in a computer, they can even get a very fuzzy picture of what Pluto might look like.
But if you can get the funding, nothing beats sending some good cameras out on a spacecraft for a real close look. For example, here you can see galleries of images captured by the Cassini probe of the major moons of Saturn. And here are images from the Voyager probes.
Not all planets are made up of surfaces :)
There are the Jovian planets & Terrestial ones.
Yes. We can see the surface of mercury.
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Are we able to see the surface of other planets (besides Mars) @Mama_Cakes It sounds like you might be asking whether we have landed rovers on any other planets, capable of sending back close-up pictures of surface detail such as gravel and sand, like we see in the Mars pix?
Spacecraft have “landed” on Venus, sending back data during descent to the surface before getting incinerated prior to reaching the surface. I don’t think Mercury is a candidate for rovers, either. Various spacecraft have sent back fantastic pictures of the gas-giant planets and some of their moons, taken during close fly-bys, but nowhere close to showing surface detail as a rover does.
Making a soft landing on another world is a very big deal!
@gasman That’s what I was getting at, yes. Thanks for the response!
The only limitation to sending robotic probes to other planets and moons broadcasting from their surfaces is money. If we had stopped spending money on military worldwide we would probably watch a rover braodcasting from Pluto or beyond.
Sending people is more difficult, so even with tons of money the technology is more difficult to develop.
There are only a few places where we can land to explore the surface with robots. Locally we have the moon, then Mars, and as previously mentioned Mercury and Venus are too hot for our electronics to last. Some moons of Jupiter are candidates for robotic research. but the gas giants have a gravity and atmosphere that is too extreme for our state of the art equipment. I would really love to see the probably liquid surface of Jupiter and Saturn but it will be a long time before instruments that can survive are invented.
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