Farsighted
by Kerim
Could someone please explain to me how, when we can see all the way to other galaxies, we somehow missed a planet in our own solar system? Is it that our telescopes are all farsighted?
Could someone please explain to me how, when we can see all the way to other galaxies, we somehow missed a planet in our own solar system? Is it that our telescopes are all farsighted?
Well, it’s very much smaller and dimmer than anything we can see at galactic distances, so that’s not really a fair comparison. Anyway, the real trick with these things is noticing them, rather than being able to see them once you know where to look. From Earth it’s just a small faint dot moving very slowly against the starry background.
Seems the specific reason this wasn’t spotted until now was that it’s 44 degrees out of the ecliptic, so it wasn’t in the part of the sky where you normally look for such things.
Thanks Tim!
In other words, “Dude, Space is _big_.”