• Question: how far away can the strongest telescopes see?

    Asked by anon-200949 to Rosemary, Oliver, Leigh, Jordan, Hannah, David on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Leigh Kesler

      Leigh Kesler answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Interesting question! The farthest we have seen visible light with a telescope is 13 billion light years with the Hubble telescope. However, even if we built a better telescope that could see more clearly or farther away, the furthest we could see would be 13.8 billion light years. That is because even though light moves very very fast, it still takes time for it to travel through space. Since the universe is around 13.8 billion years old, if there are objects in the universe farther away than that, we can’t see them because the light hasn’t gotten to us yet!

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