Will digital cameras ever get good enough to photograph without a telescope?

Probably not for quite a while :3

Pluto, no. That is NASA’s business.

The problem is not the “quality of the camera”, it’s simple physics.

To photograph pluto, you need something that looks like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbenedict/2511843139/

(note the chair, bottom right)

If I wanted to ever photograph anything in our solar system, it would be really tight close-ups of the rings of Saturn. Pluto is okay I suppose, but probably pretty boring subject matter.

Size matters.

@grumpyfish is right. Its not a matter of digital technology, it is a matter of diverging light beams coherently, and eliminating light from all other sources. For that, you need a particular distance through which the light must travel, particular strength lenses that are ground in an extremely accurate fashion etc.

Note that you can get a 10MP camera for $200, but a good quality 10MP camera can cost up to $5,000 because of the cost of the lenses and the manipulation of the data that is detected.

@FireMadeFlesh Precisely! And you could strap that $5k 10MP camera to the CHFT pictured above and get some awesome photos of the universe.

No, but a student from my high school (during his time there) once detected a planets with a low-level digital camera and some modified equipment (he still needed a tripod…)

@grumpyfish What wouldn’t I do for the keys to that thing….... I might never leave.

@all thank-you for answering