Ummm... telescopes see the same images we do, only with greater clarity because they have a bigger "eye" with which to view the stars (it's called the aperture; the bigger the diameter of the telescope's mirror or lens, the better the image because it can "capture" more of the incoming photons).Photons are photons, and all travel at lightspeed. The farther away the source of the image, the longer it takes the light to reach us, so therefore the older the light is which forms the image we are looking at. For example, the Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda (M-31) is approximately 2.3 million lightyears away. We can see this galaxy in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye (if we're in a dark sky area) so the light we are actually seeing is 2.3 million years old.
Essentially we're looking back in time... and telescopes don't speed up the process at all. Their function is to grab more photons, and the function of the eyepiece of the telescope is to magnify that image so we can see it better.
And... if telescopes could somehow reach out and "see light faster than it was coming in to them" then they would be seeing "younger," hence newer, light. Think about it... 
What gives me goosebumps to consider is the fact that in the one image, all the "stars" in the background are other galaxies, each with probably approximately 6-10 billion stars in it.
Knda makes ya feel eensy beensy, doesn't it?
[ 05-16-2002 06:27 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]
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posted 05-04-2002 01:24 PM
