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dougola t1_j2duycy wrote

Are any of these craft something that the Webb telescope could find to get a look at? non-astronomy person here.

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twputter t1_j2e00qn wrote

Or could you point the Webb to see one of these probes out there? Would be unlikely but interesting.

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rocketsocks t1_j2f1jua wrote

They are far too dim. Remember that light falls off with 1/r^2 distance from the Sun, while at the same time the intensity of light received at Earth falls off with 1/r^2 distance from the Earth. For objects in the outer solar system many tens of AU away from both the Earth and the Sun the result is that the distance from the Sun and the distance to the observer (which is usually near the Earth) are similar, since at such scales the Earth and the Sun are very close together. This means that brightness falls off roughly with a relationship of 1/r^4 distance from the Sun/Earth. Meaning that an object 100 AU away is not just 10,000x dimmer than 1 AU away but 100 million times dimmer.

We can just barely see giant balls of rock and ice that are hundreds of km across in the outer solar system, a tiny bit of metal just a few meters across at most is basically invisible to our optical and infrared telescopes.

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LLuerker t1_j2ebnn7 wrote

They don’t emit light/infrared. So even if it’s possible to zoom in on things so small, you still couldn’t see them anyway.

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McGarnagl t1_j2epk4s wrote

They must reflect light though

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LLuerker t1_j2fqdxb wrote

They’re just so far away from any light source is the thing. You’d have to be within human reach of the crafts to faintly see them in the darkness.

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