I would say that depends on the telescope and what you want to view. If you have a personal telescope for your backyard, basically you'll be looking at planets in the solar system, and some space objects that are large and bright, like nearby nebulas. If you talk about professional telescopes you find in an observatory they can see farther. Sometimes telescopes on opposite sides of the world are synchronized together and this gives a larger field of view than would be possible using only a single telescope. Space telescopes can see the farthest. Hubble for example gave us a picture of many galaxies, it's called the deep field. All of these don't come even close to seeing ALL of the galaxies, and in fact there is only so far that we can see in the universe because the light from the distant parts of it haven't had the time to reach us yet. I don't have the exact number for the distance we can see. To get a sense of how far out we're talking about I have a resource I like to share: The Scale of the Universe 2.
That explains it for me. I had not thought of some objects being so far away that their light has not reached us yet. Thanks
The universe (space itself) is expanding, so there are probably some we will never be able to see. Some galaxies are traveling faster than the speed of light relative to us. I believe at least one is still visible, so though we see it now we won't see it in the future.
I know almost nothing about astronomy, but I do remember hearing some time ago that Hubble had seen something 15.6 Billion light years away. This seemed odd to me, because that would stand current estimates of the age of the universe on their ear. Also, if the Big Bang is gospel, wouldn't there be a center? One could assume that we are not at the most distant edge, so we should be able to see that center.
Not really - common medium sized amateur scopes (8 inch) can see object 3C 273, which is roughly 600 million light years away. Slightly larger (10 inch) scopes have occasionally spotted PG 1116+215 which is a whopping 2.8 billion light years away. We can currently 'see' about 13 billion years ago, theory suggest we are within a couple of hundred million of when there was anything to see
You may heard slightly wrong, Hubble can get to about 13 billion light years That is a good question. Imagine the universe as a currant cake, and one of those currants is our galaxy. As the cake cooks the currants will move away from each other without any real concept of which way is the center
You may recall this famous image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eagle_nebula_pillars.jpg There is currently a theory this formation has been destroyed, but we will have to wait a 1000 years to know for sure
If current theories are correct, there will come a day (after the Milky Way and Andromidia merge) that space will have expanded so much that anyone alive here will not be able to see any other galaxies. Should we lose our current knowledge that other galaxies exist, there will be no way for future humans to know that. Should that happen, they'll have no reason to believe anything else exists.
That seems logical, if our planet and solar system still exist that far in the future. I believe there was a calculation someone did that it would take longer than the present age of the universe for all galaxies to disappear from our view, so that would be quite a while. Sorry I don't have a link to that and only vaguely recall it.
Even many of the atoms and sub-atomic particles that make up everything on earth, have their own universes, and those universes have their own universes and on and on forever into "inner" space.
To put things in perspective -- Our sun is but a small pinprick in our own universe. The majority of stars you see are actually galaxies. If you want some truly awesome pictures with explanations go to APOD at NASA.gov. Here is a link for you: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140316.html This image says it comes from Hubble and NAZA but gives in “imaging copyright”. That confuses me. It it's copyrighted, why is it displayed for free on the NASA website?
Around most (all?) galaxies are many dwarf galaxies. Only the ones that go around ours and our closest neighbors can be seen.
At some point in the far future, the universe will have expanded so much that no other galaxies will be visible from the Milky Way and anyone around using a telescope will think it's the only galaxy in the entire universe. They won't even be able to detect the cosmic background radiation or the expansion of the universe itself so they won't even know about the Big Bang.
That would be impossible, since the universe is estimated to be arround 14 billion years old we can only see galaxies within 14 billion light years distance. Thus a small fraction of the total number
Not really. It has to be remembered that a galaxy 14 billion light years away today, was not that far away when the light began its journey. This is how we can see galaxies that seem further away than their age suggests. Often when we discuss such distant objects, the redshift of the galaxy is often mentioned. What we observe is not the galaxy zooming away from us, but the actual expansion of the fabric of space. Here is a fairly good explanation of the process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
Not really - most of the galaxies captured in the Hubble Deep Field where only around 15% the size of the Milky Way
Can all the galaxies be seen by telescopes? No ! Next question Moi I mean how can you see around the curvature of space? No
There still would be the problem of one galaxy, say a bigger, closer one, eclipsing a further smaller one so even the telescope on the more distant smaller galaxy would be in a shadow, sort of - unseen. The answer remains, unequivocally, No ! Moi No
If a telescope is in every galaxy, you mean you can't even see your own galaxy? We can see our own galaxy even without a telescope, when you get away from light pollution.
If "Can all the galaxies be seen by telescopes?" with Your inclusion of a telescope in every galaxy Than I agree one can see their own, home galaxy with their own telescope, and maybe a few other galaxies and thus every galaxy could be seen with a telescope, maybe. If someone was there to see it. I mean if Helen Keller had fallen in the woods, would she have made a sound? Moi Hey,,, too many political threads are invoking Hitler, I can invoke Helen Keller. No
