<p>There is a fundamental limit to resolution called the &quot;diffraction limit&quot; that depends on three things:</p>
<ol>
<li>The angular size of the feature you're trying to resolve,</li>
<li>The wavelength of light you're using for observation, and</li>
<li>The diameter of your telescope.</li>
</ol>
<p>#1 is out of our control: exoplanets are very far away, so their angular sizes are very small. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Proxima Centauri b</a> is about 4.2 light years away: about 700,000 times as far away as Mars when it's at its closest approach to Earth, and 100,000 times as far away as Mars at its furthest. So any given feature on Proxima Centauri b appears hundreds of thousands of times smaller than a similar feature on Mars. <em>Distant</em> exoplanets are even further away and even smaller, of course.</p>
<p>#2 is partially within our control — we can choose to observe in UV or X-rays. But most planets aren't very well illuminated in those wavelengths, and anyway, you wanted a similar picture to the Mars one, which is true color, so visible wavelengths it is.</p>
<p>So that leaves #3 — you need to make the telescope <em>really really big</em>. Not because you need the surface area to collect enough light (although that doesn't hurt), but because you need the diameter to collect light from points far enough apart. And you need to be able to point your really big telescope precisely at a very small piece of sky.</p>
<p>Nothing that exists comes close to that, and there are no concrete plans for anything that comes close to that. It's possible to imagine a sci-fi-ish solution (a swarm of high-orbit satellite telescopes with atomic clocks and digital holographic sensors, each keeping tabs on its neighbors with laser rangefinders, orienting by the stars, and sending a huge volume of data down to Earth to be processed using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">aperture synthesis</a> techniques). All of that is an evolution of things that we know are possible, but given the level of refinement required, and the cost involved, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-14T08:42:19.830Z
[No need to hold your breath.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_optical_interferometry#Astronomical_direct-detection_interferometry)
Peter - Reinstate Monica
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T15:59:10.680Z
2023-11-07T16:28:52.543Z
2023-11-07T16:28:52.543Z
hobbs
<p>The only real problem is lack of angular resolution at optical and near infrared wavelengths. Lack of photons is not an issue.</p>
<p>Suppose there were something the size of Jupiter orbiting Alpha Cen A. At a distance of 1.33 pc, a Jupiter-sized object would subtend an angle of 0.0007 arcseconds.</p>
<p>The best optical/near infrared telescopes in existence are the HST and JWST respectively, but in terms of angular resolution they can just about be beaten by <a href="https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/develop/ao/sys/galacsi.html" rel="noreferrer">adaptive optics systems</a> on the VLT. Even these deliver an angular resolution of around 0.05 arcseconds, with image pixels that are 0.025 arcseconds in size. The angular resolution is determined by the wavelength of observation divided by the telescope diameter.</p>
<p>i.e. Even the biggest exoplanet would not be resolved at all. There would be a blurry image of a <strong>point</strong> source around 0.05 arcseconds across. One would need a space telescope or an interferometer (see below) that had at least 100 times larger diameter - i.e. in the 1 km+ class.</p>
<p>In terms of number of photons - already not a problem. We can just scale how bright our Jupiter appears to work this out. Viewed from a distance of 5 au (<span class="math-container">$2.43\times 10^{-5}$</span> pc), Jupiter is around magnitude -2.5. This corresponds to an absolute magnitude (seen at 10 pc) of 25.6.  Seen at the distance of Alpha Cen this would be magnitude 21.2. The brightness limit of telescopes like the VLT, JWST or HST is a lot fainter than this - probably about 5-6 magnitudes fainter in reasonably long exposures.</p>
<p>A more interesting thing is to consider observations at far infrared and microwave wavelengths. This can be achieved with very long baseline interferometry (see for example <a href="http://eventhorizontelescope.org/" rel="noreferrer">the Event Horizon Telescope</a>. With baselines the size of the Earth, these telescopes can achieve angular resolutions of 0.00002 arcseconds, <strong>which is sufficient to resolve a giant exoplanet</strong> within 10 pc or so from the Earth.</p>
<p>The question then is why hasn't this been done? That is a good question (<a href="https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/51915/why-hasnt-vlbi-been-used-to-try-and-image-giant-exoplanets">I'm going to ask it</a>), but I suspect that this <em>is</em> down to a lack of sensitivity, because although the event horizon telescope has the resolution of a telescope the size of the Earth, it does not have the collecting area of one - and giant exoplanets may be quite faint at microwave wavlengths.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T16:40:26.383Z
2023-02-14T14:12:57.063Z
2023-02-14T14:12:57.063Z
ProfRob
<p>No, not with present telescopes.  A very tiny blurred image is all that can be achieved with present telescopes</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T14:09:45.220Z
I think the question wasn't asking about whether it's possible with current technology, but rather if it is even possible *in theory*. As in: Are there even enough photons that arrive in our solar system to create a clear picture?
Philipp
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T06:45:06.310Z
2023-02-13T06:45:06.310Z
M. A. Golding
<p>In principle yes, although only sophisticated machinery is able to receive and evaluate it.</p>
<p>As always, the basic conundrum is magnification vs. light. Large magnification works best for bright objects.</p>
<p>The theoretical limit for magnification grows with the aperture size which has obvious technical limits on Earth and in space. We can cheat our way out of them by using <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer" rel="nofollow noreferrer">telescope arrays</a></em> forming interferometers, whose aperture is the baseline distance. But these are much harder to build for optical wavelengths than for longer-wave radio frequencies. It is a developing field.</p>
<p>Notably, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_%C3%89mile_Henry_Labeyrie" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Antoine Émile Henry Labeyrie</a> has suggested a &quot;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_%C3%89mile_Henry_Labeyrie#Hypertelescope" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Hypertelescope</a>&quot; which would exactly do what you asked, namely produce direct optical images of exoplanets at relatively high resolutions.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T15:25:59.670Z
2023-02-13T17:52:14.700Z
2023-02-13T17:52:14.700Z
Peter - Reinstate Monica
<p>Prior to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons" rel="nofollow noreferrer">New Horizons probe</a> flying past Pluto, in our own solar system, <a href="https://www.bustle.com/articles/97317-these-before-and-after-images-of-pluto-show-why-the-new-horizons-mission-is-so-important-to-todays" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the best picture</a> would could get of Pluto was a blurred circular shape.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/tDBR0.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/tDBR0.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>If we can't get a high quality photo showing the detail of Pluto from Earth based telescopes and cameras we are not going to be able to get one of an exoplanet in another planetary system.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-16T14:57:16.780Z
Hubble was definitely used to obtain better imagery than that prior to New Horizons. Admittedly there were ten years of improvements in image processing and possibly as many as four servicing missions between the 1993 Hubble image and [these composites assembled in '02-'03.](https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/01/29/exoplanet-weather/)
notovny
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-16T01:08:38.703Z
2023-02-16T01:08:38.703Z
Fred
<p>Considering your question was more on the lines of is there enough data--It sounds like most people are considering relatively instanenous observations (Over a few horus, let's say), but if you just consider it a data collection problem it's just collecting and correlating photons, and a nearly infinit number of photons from any source we can see in the sky will eventually hit the planet.</p>
<p>Seems to me like it is a really difficult data wrangling problem, but if you pointed even just the existing telescopes at a single target for a couple years, correlated them all and could figure out the rotation and changes in lighting you could probably get a pretty good picture, maybe as good as the one from mars, you might even be able to get a globe of the planet if it rotated.</p>
<p>This is amazingly impractical (Let's just say imppossible) considering the requirements to record the exact timing, direction and frequency of each photon (Not to mention compensating for gravity bending, but I'd say the data is there.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-15T18:31:57.580Z
2023-02-15T18:31:57.580Z
Bill K
<p>No, not with the current or any projected &quot;next-generation&quot; of telescopes.</p>
<p>The problem isn't dust, it is distance.  To put it in context, you can consider a scale model of the universe. There is no limit to the &quot;dpi&quot; in the light (light doesn't have an intrinsic resolution), it is just that these objects are very small, very dim and very very very far away.</p>
<p>Capturing that image of Mars is like taking a photograph of a grain of sand at 20 metres. That is an impressive feat.  But to take a similar photograph of an exoplanet you would be like taking a photograph of a grain of sand on the other side of the world!</p>
<p>This would require one of three things: An enormous telescope with a mirror that is kilometers across. Or travel to the gravitational focus of the sun (which is about 100 times further than Pluto). Or optical interferometry: combining the light from two telescopes.  This would require the telescopes to be linked and to maintain sub-nanometer positioning over several kilometres.</p>
<p>Of these, optical interferometry would seem most plausible.  But while we have managed 100m baseline interferometry with ground-based telescopes (which have the advantage of not floating in space!) the amount of light they can capture means that they are limited to observations of a few bright stars.</p>
<p>One could conceive of an array of moon-based telescopes eventually achieving the kind of resolution required to directly image an exoplanet, but this isn't &quot;next-generation&quot;, but closer to science fiction.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T12:26:34.983Z
Not to mention exposure time. A planet rotates, so if you want a crisp image of the surface, you likely can't keep gathering light for a month.
Arthur
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T17:05:50.453Z
@user253751 That isn't a limit, just make your telescope bigger.  There is no limit to the "dpi" in a light signal, if you have enough time and a big enough telescope.
James K
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T20:34:28.307Z
I think you need about 1000 more 'very's in that second paragraph...
Jon Custer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-14T08:19:58.297Z
An array of Moon-based telescopes sounds like a good solution! At least, plausible in this century, and quite promising due to the size of the Moon and its lack of atmosphere.
Ruslan
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-14T13:58:12.467Z
The exoplanets are even farther away than the chemist's!
gerrit
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-14T19:53:14.747Z
@user253751 a telescope could in principle bigger than Earth, and still be orbiting Earth. The telescope would consist mostly of the mirror, which would in all likelyhood be extremely thin and thus relatively light. (Or indeed only a spider-web-like scaffold with aligned mirrors attached to it – these would take up only a small fraction of the collecting area, but that would still push down the refraction limit.) The real problem is that you wouldn't want such a telescope anywhere near Earth because the tidal forces warp the mirror and thus mess up the focus.
leftaroundabout
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-15T15:20:32.887Z
What does it mean gravitational focus of the sun?
Joshua
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-15T17:00:25.240Z
@Joshua https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/51357/31595
Therac
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-15T17:01:39.290Z
@JamesK Wouldn't floating in space actually be an advantage, not a drawback? Earth has all sorts of forces, the tectonic plates are always moving, the air currents distorting everything... Seems like it should be more feasible to get perfect sync in space.
Therac
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-16T05:29:46.883Z
@user253751 You're assuming a telescope is one giant mirror. It doesn't have to be. It can be smaller telescopes placed far apart and phased up. We do this regularly in radio astronomy, i.e. very-long baseline interferometry. The resolution approaches that of the maximum separation of the elements, so one could put elements in a heliocentric orbit and get the resolution of a mirror the size of the solar system. The longest so far was a 350,000 km baseline with [Spektr-R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spektr-R).
user71659
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T07:48:54.607Z
2023-02-13T07:48:54.607Z
James K
<p>NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken very blurry &quot;photos&quot; of exoplanets around distant stars, such as the exoplanet HIP 65426 b, in different bands of infrared light:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/7OE6e.jpg" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/7OE6e.jpg" alt="Infrared pictures of HIP 65426b" /></a></p>
<p>My question is, is it possible for the next generations of space telescopes to generate detailed, high-resolution images of such planets? Is there enough &quot;data&quot; or &quot;DPI&quot;, so to speak, in the light coming from these planets to achieve this? I know there is cosmic dust and all sorts of other interference that affects the light on its way to Earth, but I'm wondering just how much that is. I'm talking about images with the same spatial resolution of this one of Mars:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/RQOYu.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/RQOYu.png" alt="Optical image of Mars" /></a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T13:43:31.320Z
If that Mars image is the same one that headlines Wikipedia's Mars article, it was taken by the India's Mars Obiter Mission, presumably from Mars orbit.
notovny
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T17:42:07.137Z
The "data" light carries doesn't decrease with distance.  The concept of DPI doesn't really apply either.  If photons were particles, they would spread out and get less dense, but photons also behave like waves, and in that sense, the energy is spread out over a continuous area.
Greg Miller
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T19:55:09.430Z
@notovny Checking I think it is the one in Wikipedia's mars article and it was taken from 76000km away from Mars. Not sure you want to call that Mars orbit (though of course orbit has nothing to do with distance in essence), but it's a hell of a lot closer than taking it from Earth.
DRF
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-13T21:33:42.503Z
Since some such photos have been taken, the Question clearly needs editing.
Robbie Goodwin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-02-14T09:33:48.383Z
Noting James K's answer, but I'd suggest that the question needs to clarify "high resolution". For example, until relatively recently the best Earth-based telescope could show ice caps on Mars but not much more: would conclusively knowing the presence of ice caps on an extrasolar planet be adequate?
Mark Morgan Lloyd
<observational-astronomy><exoplanet><space-telescope><image-processing>
Is there enough data in light coming from distant exoplanets for Earth-orbiting telescopes to take a high-resolution photo of it?
user3163495
# Is there enough data in light coming from distant exoplanets for Earth-orbiting telescopes to take a high-resolution photo of it?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-02-13)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken very blurry "photos" of exoplanets around distant stars, such as the exoplanet HIP 65426 b, in different bands of infrared light:

[![Infrared pictures of HIP 65426b](https://i.sstatic.net/7OE6e.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/7OE6e.jpg)

My question is, is it possible for the next generations of space telescopes to generate detailed, high-resolution images of such planets? Is there enough "data" or "DPI", so to speak, in the light coming from these planets to achieve this? I know there is cosmic dust and all sorts of other interference that affects the light on its way to Earth, but I'm wondering just how much that is. I'm talking about images with the same spatial resolution of this one of Mars:

[![Optical image of Mars](https://i.sstatic.net/RQOYu.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/RQOYu.png)

**Tags:** observational-astronomy, exoplanet, space-telescope, image-processing

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: If that Mars image is the same one that headlines Wikipedia's Mars article, it was taken by the India's Mars Obiter Mission, presumably from Mars orbit.  
> **username_2**: The "data" light carries doesn't decrease with distance.  The concept of DPI doesn't really apply either.  If photons were particles, they would spread out and get less dense, but photons also behave like waves, and in that sense, the energy is spread out over a continuous area.  
> **username_3**: @username_1 Checking I think it is the one in Wikipedia's mars article and it was taken from 76000km away from Mars. Not sure you want to call that Mars orbit (though of course orbit has nothing to do with distance in essence), but it's a hell of a lot closer than taking it from Earth.  
> **username_4**: Since some such photos have been taken, the Question clearly needs editing.  
> **username_5**: Noting username_13's answer, but I'd suggest that the question needs to clarify "high resolution". For example, until relatively recently the best Earth-based telescope could show ice caps on Mars but not much more: would conclusively knowing the presence of ice caps on an extrasolar planet be adequate?  

---

## 7 answers

### Answer by username_13 on 2023-02-13. Score: 26 | Accepted answer

No, not with the current or any projected "next-generation" of telescopes.

The problem isn't dust, it is distance. To put it in context, you can consider a scale model of the universe. There is no limit to the "dpi" in the light (light doesn't have an intrinsic resolution), it is just that these objects are very small, very dim and very very very far away.

Capturing that image of Mars is like taking a photograph of a grain of sand at 20 metres. That is an impressive feat. But to take a similar photograph of an exoplanet you would be like taking a photograph of a grain of sand on the other side of the world!

This would require one of three things: An enormous telescope with a mirror that is kilometers across. Or travel to the gravitational focus of the sun (which is about 100 times further than Pluto). Or optical interferometry: combining the light from two telescopes. This would require the telescopes to be linked and to maintain sub-nanometer positioning over several kilometres.

Of these, optical interferometry would seem most plausible. But while we have managed 100m baseline interferometry with ground-based telescopes (which have the advantage of not floating in space!) the amount of light they can capture means that they are limited to observations of a few bright stars.

One could conceive of an array of moon-based telescopes eventually achieving the kind of resolution required to directly image an exoplanet, but this isn't "next-generation", but closer to science fiction.

> **Comments:**
> **username_14**: Not to mention exposure time. A planet rotates, so if you want a crisp image of the surface, you likely can't keep gathering light for a month.  
> **username_13**: @user253751 That isn't a limit, just make your telescope bigger.  There is no limit to the "dpi" in a light signal, if you have enough time and a big enough telescope.  
> **username_15**: I think you need about 1000 more 'very's in that second paragraph...  
> **username_16**: An array of Moon-based telescopes sounds like a good solution! At least, plausible in this century, and quite promising due to the size of the Moon and its lack of atmosphere.  
> **username_17**: The exoplanets are even farther away than the chemist's!  
> **username_18**: @user253751 a telescope could in principle bigger than Earth, and still be orbiting Earth. The telescope would consist mostly of the mirror, which would in all likelyhood be extremely thin and thus relatively light. (Or indeed only a spider-web-like scaffold with aligned mirrors attached to it – these would take up only a small fraction of the collecting area, but that would still push down the refraction limit.) The real problem is that you wouldn't want such a telescope anywhere near Earth because the tidal forces warp the mirror and thus mess up the focus.  
> **username_19**: What does it mean gravitational focus of the sun?  
> **username_20**: @username_19 https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/51357/31595  
> **username_20**: @JamesK Wouldn't floating in space actually be an advantage, not a drawback? Earth has all sorts of forces, the tectonic plates are always moving, the air currents distorting everything... Seems like it should be more feasible to get perfect sync in space.  
> **username_21**: @user253751 You're assuming a telescope is one giant mirror. It doesn't have to be. It can be smaller telescopes placed far apart and phased up. We do this regularly in radio astronomy, i.e. very-long baseline interferometry. The resolution approaches that of the maximum separation of the elements, so one could put elements in a heliocentric orbit and get the resolution of a mirror the size of the solar system. The longest so far was a 350,000 km baseline with [Spektr-R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spektr-R).  

---

### Answer by username_6 on 2023-02-13. Score: 19

There is a fundamental limit to resolution called the "diffraction limit" that depends on three things:

1. The angular size of the feature you're trying to resolve,
2. The wavelength of light you're using for observation, and
3. The diameter of your telescope.

#1 is out of our control: exoplanets are very far away, so their angular sizes are very small. [Proxima Centauri b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b) is about 4.2 light years away: about 700,000 times as far away as Mars when it's at its closest approach to Earth, and 100,000 times as far away as Mars at its furthest. So any given feature on Proxima Centauri b appears hundreds of thousands of times smaller than a similar feature on Mars. *Distant* exoplanets are even further away and even smaller, of course.

#2 is partially within our control — we can choose to observe in UV or X-rays. But most planets aren't very well illuminated in those wavelengths, and anyway, you wanted a similar picture to the Mars one, which is true color, so visible wavelengths it is.

So that leaves #3 — you need to make the telescope *really really big*. Not because you need the surface area to collect enough light (although that doesn't hurt), but because you need the diameter to collect light from points far enough apart. And you need to be able to point your really big telescope precisely at a very small piece of sky.

Nothing that exists comes close to that, and there are no concrete plans for anything that comes close to that. It's possible to imagine a sci-fi-ish solution (a swarm of high-orbit satellite telescopes with atomic clocks and digital holographic sensors, each keeping tabs on its neighbors with laser rangefinders, orienting by the stars, and sending a huge volume of data down to Earth to be processed using [aperture synthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis) techniques). All of that is an evolution of things that we know are possible, but given the level of refinement required, and the cost involved, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.

> **Comments:**
> **username_7**: [No need to hold your breath.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_optical_interferometry#Astronomical_direct-detection_interferometry)  

---

### Answer by username_8 on 2023-02-13. Score: 15

The only real problem is lack of angular resolution at optical and near infrared wavelengths. Lack of photons is not an issue.

Suppose there were something the size of Jupiter orbiting Alpha Cen A. At a distance of 1.33 pc, a Jupiter-sized object would subtend an angle of 0.0007 arcseconds.

The best optical/near infrared telescopes in existence are the HST and JWST respectively, but in terms of angular resolution they can just about be beaten by [adaptive optics systems](https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/develop/ao/sys/galacsi.html) on the VLT. Even these deliver an angular resolution of around 0.05 arcseconds, with image pixels that are 0.025 arcseconds in size. The angular resolution is determined by the wavelength of observation divided by the telescope diameter.

i.e. Even the biggest exoplanet would not be resolved at all. There would be a blurry image of a **point** source around 0.05 arcseconds across. One would need a space telescope or an interferometer (see below) that had at least 100 times larger diameter - i.e. in the 1 km+ class.

In terms of number of photons - already not a problem. We can just scale how bright our Jupiter appears to work this out. Viewed from a distance of 5 au ($2.43\times 10^{-5}$ pc), Jupiter is around magnitude -2.5. This corresponds to an absolute magnitude (seen at 10 pc) of 25.6. Seen at the distance of Alpha Cen this would be magnitude 21.2. The brightness limit of telescopes like the VLT, JWST or HST is a lot fainter than this - probably about 5-6 magnitudes fainter in reasonably long exposures.

A more interesting thing is to consider observations at far infrared and microwave wavelengths. This can be achieved with very long baseline interferometry (see for example [the Event Horizon Telescope](http://eventhorizontelescope.org/). With baselines the size of the Earth, these telescopes can achieve angular resolutions of 0.00002 arcseconds, **which is sufficient to resolve a giant exoplanet** within 10 pc or so from the Earth.

The question then is why hasn't this been done? That is a good question ([I'm going to ask it](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/51915/why-hasnt-vlbi-been-used-to-try-and-image-giant-exoplanets)), but I suspect that this *is* down to a lack of sensitivity, because although the event horizon telescope has the resolution of a telescope the size of the Earth, it does not have the collecting area of one - and giant exoplanets may be quite faint at microwave wavlengths.


---

### Answer by username_9 on 2023-02-13. Score: 4

No, not with present telescopes. A very tiny blurred image is all that can be achieved with present telescopes

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: I think the question wasn't asking about whether it's possible with current technology, but rather if it is even possible *in theory*. As in: Are there even enough photons that arrive in our solar system to create a clear picture?  

---

### Answer by username_7 on 2023-02-13. Score: 3

In principle yes, although only sophisticated machinery is able to receive and evaluate it.

As always, the basic conundrum is magnification vs. light. Large magnification works best for bright objects.

The theoretical limit for magnification grows with the aperture size which has obvious technical limits on Earth and in space. We can cheat our way out of them by using *[telescope arrays](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer)* forming interferometers, whose aperture is the baseline distance. But these are much harder to build for optical wavelengths than for longer-wave radio frequencies. It is a developing field.

Notably, [Antoine Émile Henry Labeyrie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_%C3%89mile_Henry_Labeyrie) has suggested a "[Hypertelescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_%C3%89mile_Henry_Labeyrie#Hypertelescope)" which would exactly do what you asked, namely produce direct optical images of exoplanets at relatively high resolutions.


---

### Answer by username_11 on 2023-02-16. Score: 1

Prior to the [New Horizons probe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons) flying past Pluto, in our own solar system, [the best picture](https://www.bustle.com/articles/97317-these-before-and-after-images-of-pluto-show-why-the-new-horizons-mission-is-so-important-to-todays) would could get of Pluto was a blurred circular shape.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/tDBR0.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/tDBR0.png)

If we can't get a high quality photo showing the detail of Pluto from Earth based telescopes and cameras we are not going to be able to get one of an exoplanet in another planetary system.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Hubble was definitely used to obtain better imagery than that prior to New Horizons. Admittedly there were ten years of improvements in image processing and possibly as many as four servicing missions between the 1993 Hubble image and [these composites assembled in '02-'03.](https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/01/29/exoplanet-weather/)  

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### Answer by username_12 on 2023-02-15. Score: -1

Considering your question was more on the lines of is there enough data--It sounds like most people are considering relatively instanenous observations (Over a few horus, let's say), but if you just consider it a data collection problem it's just collecting and correlating photons, and a nearly infinit number of photons from any source we can see in the sky will eventually hit the planet.

Seems to me like it is a really difficult data wrangling problem, but if you pointed even just the existing telescopes at a single target for a couple years, correlated them all and could figure out the rotation and changes in lighting you could probably get a pretty good picture, maybe as good as the one from mars, you might even be able to get a globe of the planet if it rotated.

This is amazingly impractical (Let's just say imppossible) considering the requirements to record the exact timing, direction and frequency of each photon (Not to mention compensating for gravity bending, but I'd say the data is there.


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