telescope lens

[don2010]

If you took five four inch reflecting telescopes, placed one in NY.,one in WA., one in Cal., one in NC., and one in Fla.,focused them on the same spot in the sky , digitised the pictures and superimposed them on a screen, would the resulting image be as if you had a telescope with a lens of ~ 3,000 miles diameter? If not, why not?

 

[MeteorWayne]

No, they would be 5 individual images. You could photoshop them and add the images, but the resolution would not increase.

For that you need an interferometer...look up the term for that. Optical interferometers can be done over relatively short baselines, in fact it is done in the tens of meters range.

Radio interferometers can have much longer baselines.