How long until cellphone cams became so good that we could watch planets with their focal power like a telescope lens? Neglecting SpaceX and Bezos satellites (at least from the moment), how far are we from cellphone "binocular"/telescope vision of celestial bodies like planets or other objects?
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$\begingroup$ I can't quite figure out what do you want to ask. 'How long' was what? $\endgroup$– User123Aug 12, 2021 at 11:53
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$\begingroup$ How much time? MOnths, years? Having into account the progress in lens makers for cellphones and the software development to come... $\endgroup$– riemanniumAug 12, 2021 at 11:54
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$\begingroup$ It might be worth mentioning that, while objects in our own solar system can be seen with refracting telescopes, the vast majority of modern telescopes use reflecting telescopes, using mirror optics that can never physically be found in a phone, as the dimensions would never be practical for a handheld device. That being said, refraction is an option for certain objects, but depend in a square relation to the diameter of the lenses, making smaller lenses especially less capable than larger ones. $\endgroup$– Justin TSep 11, 2021 at 19:44
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2 Answers
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With something like the virtual telescope project you can "drive" a remotely located telescope from your phone, but I don't think that's what you mean.
A few years ago I asked Milky Way with a cell phone, how is this possible? and every generation phones are improving even further for sky shots (star trails, Milky Way, etc.). But I don't think that's what you mean either.
...how far are we of cellphone "binocular"/telescope vision of minor/main major solar system planets?
I don't think you meant exoplanets, I think you mean "our" planets like Mars, Jupiter, etc.
Mars and Jupiter are about 25 and 50 arc seconds in diameter when they are closest to us. Due to atmospheric seeing the best we can hope for for a telescope is 1 arc second. That's hard to do in astrophotography but people improve their chances with things like lucky imaging
Let's say we'll settle for 2 arc seconds or 1/25 the diameter of Jupiter. If the atmosphere cooperates we can resolve the great read spot. Putting that into the familliar Airy relationship
$$\Delta \theta \approx 1.22 \frac{\lambda}{d}$$
gives us 7 centimeters, or 2.7 inches. It's not a coincidence that many first telescopes (like mine for example) are 2.4 or 3 inch refracting telescopes!
A cell phone's pixels are of order 1 micron, so if your 7 cm diameter lens had a focal length of 10 cm it would be a f/1.5 lens.
Right now
we just can't get the resolution to see anything on Jupiter without a large, circular glass aperture of many centimeters and an imaging distance of about 10 cm. Basically a really really specialized monocular.
We don't currently have a way to make a flat phased array for light with broadband polychromatic response. We really need the volume of a soda can or so to do it properly.
But how long until we can do it with a cell phone?
Well we could make cell phones the size and shape of soda cans!
If not, I don't know of any technology even on the horizon that can do this.
Once nano-fabricated antennas and amplifiers can work at optical frequencies, maybe we can make some fancy flat phased arrays for light. But there's nothing even close currently.
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1$\begingroup$ Though, cellphone cameras technology came from technologies, serving space exploration (coming from NASA, JPL), the use of them and roadmap are different. Cellphone cameras are more likely to be aimed as a class of 'normal digital cameras. With current technology additional lenses is the best that can be proposed from the optical enhancement point. Here is a digest of cellphone development: techarena24.com/… $\endgroup$– LarilissAug 12, 2021 at 13:13
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1$\begingroup$ Though, cellphone cameras technology came from technologies, serving space exploration (coming from NASA, JPL), the use of them and roadmap are different. Cellphone cameras are more likely to be aimed as a class of 'normal' digital cameras. With capabilities as wide cameras, ultra-wide cameras, macro-cameras (PRO - mode proposed by vendors). With current technology additional lenses is the best that can be proposed from the optical enhancement point. $\endgroup$– LarilissAug 12, 2021 at 13:47
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Well. Firstly, Mobile phones are still using fixed lenses to capture images, all the effective zoom are still done digitally, which is artificial and inefficient. So If you want to see a variety of Celestial objects, for example, If you want to see all the 7 planets (excluding Earth) in our solar system using a cellphone, you need 7 different lenses/ cameras with seven different focus .
Secondly, definitely the future technology will enable to adjust the focus within the mobile phone, there comes another problem, the aperture, or simply the light gathering capacity, is not enough for space exploration. For example take the Samsung galaxy K zoom, which has a mechanical camera, has an aperture good enough to see the craters of our moon, but not even close enough to see anything beyond that clearly. To see our neighbor ,take Venus (Mars is too small for the following aperture size), to see its changing phase We need at least 55 mm of aperture.
Thirdly, Sensors. Even some of the best cameras for astrophotography, is quite inefficient to what it is really intended for, noise and camera's pixel rate plays a crucial role in delivering good-quality image.
Next, Spherical and Chromatic aberrations will be a disaster when we see distant celestial objects (Jupiter?). As we will be packing wide variety of lenses in a small place, these problems starts to appear.
We do have Some accessories that acts as a zoom, powerful enough to see moon 20x closer, but with this power, we can't even dream seeing anything beyond that. Even seeing the moon with these equipment, you can definitely see noticeable inefficiency. Smartphones today are already capable to deliver good images of our Moon "digitally".
So, after resolving/finding alternative solutions for these problems, There is a chance that one day Smartphones can replace amateur telescopes. But that wont happen for the next 3-4 decades.
answered Aug 12, 2021 at 13:22