You probably calculate image resolution in terms of inches, or millimeters, per pixel. (Reminder: horizontal field of view divided by horizontal number of pixels on your camera sensor, to determine the ‘sensitivity’ of your vision system to image features.)
Well at NASA they work on a bigger scale. Much bigger. The latest images of Mercury from the Messenger probe, have a resolution of 5 kilometers per pixel! If you go with my rule of thumb for detectability, which says you need at least three pixels to ‘see’ a feature, then the smallest object NASA will see on the planets’ surface is 5km across.
I guess that means we won’t be seeing any little green – or grey – men!
The information comes from this posting on the optics.org blog. If you read the whole article you’ll see that as the probe got closer, resolution improved to 330 meters per pixel. In other words, positively microscopic!
If that doesn’t put things in perspective for you, I don’t know what will.
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