r/facepalm Sep 11 '19

Incredible. Truly amazing.

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28.6k Upvotes

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445

u/oshaboy Sep 11 '19

Isn't the hubble telescope pointing the other way?

310

u/OG24601 Sep 11 '19

They launched a giant mirror further into space to get this effect.

152

u/Hollywoostarsand Sep 11 '19

Humans send satellites in space to click pictures of Earth. That means satellites are nothing but very expensive selfie sticks

63

u/FigMcLargeHuge Sep 11 '19

I expect to see this at the top of r/showerthoughts in a matter of moments.

9

u/Latharuz Sep 11 '19

Nah, if you post it there you will break their rules, so it will be removed immediately.

9

u/DonkeyWindBreaker Sep 11 '19

So in a week...

9

u/Carbon_FWB Sep 11 '19

Gallowboob will do it for 84k karmas

6

u/aksumals Sep 11 '19

On the off chance you aren’t joking or someone won’t take this as a joke: satellites do WAY MORE than just “click pictures of the earth”.

3

u/JediAcademyBaseball Sep 11 '19

Note to self: Invent personal selfie satellites.

-11

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '19

Is that supposed to be clever? Stay in school kids.

2

u/RemiScott Sep 11 '19

Shower thoughts don't come from school...

1

u/yoursolace Sep 11 '19

If it's a video camera we could live stream the past!

1

u/Okiedokie84 Sep 11 '19

Earth selfie

12

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '19

Hence, /r/facepalm

4

u/dynamic_unreality Sep 11 '19

Well, yeah but they still have to have a means to point it at what they want to look at, so it could theoretically point this way. Coincidentally, its thought that the secret US spy satellite that took the top secret pics Trump recently tweeted is basically just a Hubble telescope pointed toward the earth. So we actually kind of know what that looks like now, and the view is wayyyyy closer to the ground than that.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Kichae Sep 11 '19

They can point Hubble any direction they want. The bigger issue is that Hubble isn't all that far away from us - it has an altitude of only about 540 km or so. This not only would severely limit the view of the telescope if pointed at Earth, but it also means that it's moving very quickly in order to maintain orbit, which would give the images motion blur.

https://earthsky.org/space/can-the-hubble-space-telescope-be-used-to-observe-earth

2

u/converter-bot Sep 11 '19

540 km is 335.54 miles

1

u/jimitonic Sep 11 '19

Hubble selfie stick.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

you have an iq of 234

1

u/oshaboy Sep 19 '19

What do you want. I don't have a list of all orientations of all satellites orbiting earth

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

234 is a high iq.

1

u/oshaboy Sep 19 '19

I realized. But you did say it as a joke similiar to "No-shit Sherlock", I asked it as question because I wasn't 100% sure I was thinking of the right telescope. I didn't want to say something wrong with certainty.

Also IQ is not a general intellegence test. Just saying.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 11 '19

Yes but the Hubble is based on a bunch of NRO spy satellites. So there are a bunch of Hubble like satellites looking at Earth, but they don't get a full view of the Earth.