by iamlucky13 » Sun Jan 20, 2008 4:21 am
I just thought I'd add that the Hubble's sharpest camera has a spatial sampling (approximately the same as resolution) of 0.025 arcseconds per pixel, which works out to 0.3 light years at the distance to Andromeda.
Our sun, of course, is four light years from the nearest star, so in an environment like that, the Hubble could pick out individual stars, assuming it is sensitive enough to detect single stars, which I'm sure it probably is. Closer in towards the core, however, the density is much higher.
However, for almost any picture where you can recognize another galaxy as such, you can with very high confidence bet than any given point of light is a foreground star in the Milky Way or a cluster or supergiant star in the other galaxy.
I just thought I'd add that the Hubble's sharpest camera has a spatial sampling (approximately the same as resolution) of 0.025 arcseconds per pixel, which works out to 0.3 light years at the distance to Andromeda.
Our sun, of course, is four light years from the nearest star, so in an environment like that, the Hubble could pick out individual stars, assuming it is sensitive enough to detect single stars, which I'm sure it probably is. Closer in towards the core, however, the density is much higher.
However, for almost any picture where you can recognize another galaxy as such, you can with very high confidence bet than any given point of light is a foreground star in the Milky Way or a cluster or supergiant star in the other galaxy.