What space object probably won’t be photographed?
Photographers use to say that everything has already been photographed. Still, there is one enormous object in the Universe that still wasn’t photographed and probably will never be pictured. Which one? It is our Milky Way galaxy. Why? Because we still did not send anything out of our home galaxy. Our technology is still not advanced enough to send cosmic objects out of the Milky Way. Up to today (I wrote this post on the 13th of January 2021), only two man-made objects already left the Solar System. NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 accomplished the mission of going out of the Solar System. How long did it take them to leave the Solar System? Both human-made objects started their cosmic journey in 1977. Voyager 1 left the Solar System in 2012, and Voyager 2 in 2018. NASA stated that:
The Voyagers are destined — perhaps eternally — to wander the Milky Way.
But how long would it take for humans to leave the Milky Way to take a picture of our galaxy? It is estimated that the distance between the Earth and the Edge of the Milky Way is ~25.000 years for light to cross. Thus, if we would launch the space object with the speed of light (300.000- km per second), it would take twenty-five thousand years (measured from the Earth) to reach the external boundaries of our galaxy. Is it possible to move at the speed of light? The physics provides with the short answer: no, it is impossible. Thus, twenty-five thousand years after launching the object is the minimum period of interstellar traveling.
That’s why we still do not have an accurate picture of the Milky Way.
I suppose that humans won’t take a photograph of the Milky Way, but I hope that I am wrong. I merely think that a minimum of 25.000 years to wait for being on Earth to see the picture of the Milky Way is, speaking shortly, too long for any civilization to wait for the moment of launching the object. Then, this civilization will have to wait thousands of years to receive the picture.
