Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes
I can see stars that are >10,000 light-years distant, for all the good that does in my knowing what goes on there.
|
You can see an object with an ‘angular diameter’ as small as 0.0024 arcseconds if it's sufficiently bright (the star Deneb, for example). That's a bit under 6 inches at 8000 miles - but it has to be SUPER bright (like a star...)
Under excellent conditions the human eye can distinguish between two non-stellar objects 0.01 degrees apart, which is 7372 feet apart at 8000 miles - if you know where to look. You can hypothetically spot individual objects about twice that length - it's like spotting something round that's only the diameter of a babies head hair.
Functionally speaking, on the other side of the Earth you can see city blocks, not aircraft carriers, unless you're Superman with Supervision. That's just "as many levels of Telescopic Vision as the plot demands".