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Back to 27.6 Limits of Resolution: The Rayleigh Criterion

27.6 Exercise 4

Avg difficulty 2.5

The 300-m-diameter Arecibo radio telescope pictured in the figure detects radio waves with a 4.00 cm average wavelength.

(a) What is the angle between two just-resolvable point sources for this telescope?

(b) How close together could these point sources be at the 2 million light year distance of the Andromeda galaxy?

OpenStax College Physics 2e, 27.6 Limits of Resolution: The Rayleigh Criterion, exercise 4

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Adapted from College Physics © 2022 Rice University. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Sources: College Physics 2e, College Physics for AP® Courses 2e. Imported at revision f98d7a7.