Starship Asterisk*

At a mere 120 mm, the EIT instrument aboard SOHO has a very small aperture. To equal its resolution for a star 4 ly away would require a mirror sized up by a factor of about 250,000- the ratio of the distance to the Alpha Centaurus system and the distance from SOHO to the Sun. So you'd want a teles...

Assuming it was scientifically possible to combine the capabilities of some of our most advanced instruments, say SOHO and Hubble, how large would the lens or mirror of a telescope need to be so that we could see Proxima Centauri, or preferably the nearest Sun-like star Alpha Centauri A, at the same...