system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If we were to theoretically point the James Webb Space Telescope straight towards Earth, how magnified of an image will we be able to see?
gpt
So, this wouldn't actually be doable - Earth is too bright and too hot etc - but JWST has a resolution of about 0.1 arcseconds, where an arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree, and at its distance (1.5 million km), that comes out to a resolution of a bit under a kilometre. So JWST's resolution would be enough to make a more than 10,000x10,000 pixel resolution image of Earth, if it were possible for it to image the Earth. That might be lower resolution than you'd think, but JWST really is very far away, many times further than any astronaut has ever travelled from Earth.