How much can you enhance a dig photo?

[DanteARossi]

A friend of mine said that if you took a photo with a 12MP camera, of an object 500 miles away you could take 3MP x3MP piece of it and multiply it enough to get an image from it. Is that possible???

[StanH]

No, it's not possible. 500 miles is a very, very long way. 500 miles is roughly the distance from Atlanta to St. Louis. You can't see Atlanta from St. Louis. Even with a lot of megapixels.

[Galahad]

And if you factor in Earth's curvature, you won't see anything at 500 miles, they're all below the horizon.

[NJMurphy]

And if you factor in Earth's curvature, you won't see anything at 500 miles, they're all below the horizon.

From the top of the Empire State Building you'd only be able to see about 43 miles on a clear day; even then, atmospheric haze would make discernment of any particular item at that distance pretty dicey.

Even with the MOAT lens.

[LynnP]

I take photos of the moon and that is 240,000 miles. If I take a photo of it with my 12MP Canon 5D or if you want a Nikon 700 and use 9MP of the photos and providing you used a 400mm lens you should be able to get considerable detail from some pretty small objects on the moon. The OP did not state the size of the object. Or of course we could move the Moon to 500 miles away-----Hmmmm, that would cause considerable problems not associated with photography.


Lynn

[StanH]

I read that the moon isn't real and it's just a conspiracy by the government. It was on the internet, so it must be true and therefore does not count.

[BobF]

I read that the moon isn't real and it's just a conspiracy by the government. It was on the internet, so it must be true and therefore does not count.

And it's made of cheese. And some strange man lives inside it.

[suci]

And it's made of cheese. And some strange man lives inside it.

It's the Dairy industry that financed the moon landings. The aim was to do away with competition.

[AstroImager]

Heck,that's nothing. I regularly take photos of nebulae tens to hundreds of light years away, and of galaxies millions of light years away. I've even taken a photo of a quasar that's 11 *billion* light years away.
500 miles is nothing

Paul