<p>Ignoring the effects of the atmosphere and the engineering issues you would need to overcome to build such a monstrosity, yes you could resolve details that well.  There is no physical reason you couldn't.</p>

<p>There are many optical interferometers, but their baselines are currently only tens to hundreds of meters wide. See this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_interferometers_at_visible_and_infrared_wavelengths" rel="nofollow noreferrer">List of astronomical interferometers at visible and infrared wavelengths</a>.</p>

<p>In fact, radio astronomers regularly achieve such spatial resolution by combining multiple far apart radio telescopes together to act as one giant telescope. This is a technique called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry" rel="nofollow noreferrer">very long baseline interferometry</a>, and it was used recently to create the first image of a black hole by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Event Horizon Telescope</a> using sites distributed across the Earth.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-11-15T01:09:29.983Z
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/search?q=event+horizon+telescope
uhoh
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2019-11-15T01:31:21.743Z
I hope you don't mind me adding additional links. Please feel free to roll back or edit further.
uhoh
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2019-11-15T00:37:04.800Z
2019-11-15T01:30:58.047Z
2019-11-15T01:30:58.047Z
Kyle
<p>I have calculated that a 100m telescope can resolve 16m on the moon. Does that mean a 1000km telescope is 10000x better and can resolve 1.6 mm objects on the moon and even smaller closer? Or is there some limit to using a telescope as a microscope?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-11-12T00:08:07.887Z
Turbulence in the atmosphere, a.k.a. 'seeing' will stop you from doing that.
AtmosphericPrisonEscape
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2019-11-15T12:00:09.117Z
Which wavelength regime are you interested in?
samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
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2019-11-15T13:39:29.807Z
@AtmosphericPrisonEscape Since the telescope tube has a diameter of 1000 km it should be *relatively* trivial to make the tube length 100 km or so. That ought to fix the turbulence problem. ;)
PM 2Ring
<telescope><angular-resolution>
Would a 1000 km telescope be able to resolve microscopic detail?
user30892
# Would a 1000 km telescope be able to resolve microscopic detail?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-11-11)

I have calculated that a 100m telescope can resolve 16m on the moon. Does that mean a 1000km telescope is 10000x better and can resolve 1.6 mm objects on the moon and even smaller closer? Or is there some limit to using a telescope as a microscope?

**Tags:** telescope, angular-resolution

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Turbulence in the atmosphere, a.k.a. 'seeing' will stop you from doing that.  
> **username_2**: Which wavelength regime are you interested in?  
> **username_3**: @username_1 Since the telescope tube has a diameter of 1000 km it should be *relatively* trivial to make the tube length 100 km or so. That ought to fix the turbulence problem. ;)  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2019-11-15. Score: 1

Ignoring the effects of the atmosphere and the engineering issues you would need to overcome to build such a monstrosity, yes you could resolve details that well. There is no physical reason you couldn't.

There are many optical interferometers, but their baselines are currently only tens to hundreds of meters wide. See this [List of astronomical interferometers at visible and infrared wavelengths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_interferometers_at_visible_and_infrared_wavelengths).

In fact, radio astronomers regularly achieve such spatial resolution by combining multiple far apart radio telescopes together to act as one giant telescope. This is a technique called [very long baseline interferometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry), and it was used recently to create the first image of a black hole by the [Event Horizon Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope) using sites distributed across the Earth.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/search?q=event+horizon+telescope  
> **username_5**: I hope you don't mind me adding additional links. Please feel free to roll back or edit further.  

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