How far?

[safarial]

What is the farthest distance, we can see with a telescope?

 

[T J]

Round about 14.5 billion light years... I think.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

about 12 Billion lightyears I think. I know the universe is like 13.6 billion lightyears across because that's how old it is.

 

[Jadzia]

What is the farthest distance, we can see with a telescope?

If you are in a submarine, then not very far. And if your submarine has horns, then you might very well go blind.

 

[Shawnster]

about 12 Billion lightyears I think. I know the universe is like 13.6 billion lightyears across because that's how old it is.

If the universe expands in all directions at a constant rate then wouldn't the total width (dia) be double the age?

Actually this article from MSNBC has different figures: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5051818/

If you've ever wondered how big the universe is, you're not alone. Astronomers have long pondered this, too, and they've had a hard time figuring it out. Now an estimate has been made, and it’s a whopper.The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide.
In the new study, researchers examined primordial radiation imprinted on the cosmos. Among their conclusions is that it is less likely that there is some crazy cosmic "hall of mirrors" that would cause one object to be visible in two locations. And they've ruled out the idea that we could peer deep into space and time and see our own planet in its youth.

First, let's see why the size is a number you've never heard of before.

Stretching reality
The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

about 12 Billion lightyears I think. I know the universe is like 13.6 billion lightyears across because that's how old it is.

If the universe expands in all directions at a constant rate then wouldn't the total width (dia) be double the age?

Holy poop you're right. LMAO. My brain must have stopped working that day, I can't believe that didn't register in my noggin.

 

[Christopher]

In theory, there's no limit to how far you could see with a telescope, if it were a big enough telescope. The only reason we can't see anything farther away than 13.8 billion light years in any direction is that the universe is only 13.8 billion years old, so any light from farther away simply hasn't had time to reach our telescopes yet.

It's hard for us Earthbound types to realize that there are no horizons in space, that just being far away doesn't make something invisible. With sensitive enough instruments, you can see anything at any distance, unless it's directly behind something else. And even then there may be ways to see it; for instance, something hidden by a nebula in visible light may be detectable through that nebula in infrared or radio or x-rays.

 

[Venardhi]

Even if it is directly behind something, the light passing near that object would be bent towards us allowing us to see it, though highly distorted.