How clear would the earth appear to someone who is on a space station in Proxima Centauri?

if they were observing us with a powerful telescope?How clear would the earth appear to someone who is on a space station in Proxima Centauri?
The best way to answer this question is by knowing how many earth sized planets we have detected around other nearby stars. None. We lack sufficient power to resolve earth sized planets around distant stars. Instead, we detect exosolar planets by the wobble they introduce in their primaries (the stars they orbit).





At the present time an earth sized mass is simply too small to create a wobble we could detect at even 4.3 light years. So someone on a space station orbitting Proxima Centauri (or some planet thereof) could not see any planet in our solar system with equipment as powerless as what we now possess.





The Terrestrial Planet Finder project, which would have been launched by NASA around 2014, would have been an interferometer optical space based telescope powerful enough to resolve surface features on earth sized terrestrial worlds orbitting distant suns. Way cool! But we spent the money on the Iraq war instead.





Taoetemu (immediately above) gives a good response to this question.How clear would the earth appear to someone who is on a space station in Proxima Centauri?
Visual telescopes would not be powerful enough to see anything but the Sun, and maybe Jupiter as a spot of light. This has more to do with the wave properties of light than with the quality and size of the telescope. So, no they are not observing us. They may be monitoring our radio and electronic emissions, so they are probably watching reruns of Star Trek by now. That should scare them off.


Chances are, though. that if we haven't picked up any emissions from them, they don't use radio/electromagnetic waves, so aren't monitoring us.





To Jane, above me, Proxima Centauri is about 3.5 light years away. Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away.
Agree that no telescope could directly observe earth from 4 light years away. If they were monitoring anything it would likely be the radio transmissions. But that star system does not look promising for life to originate thare to have anyone listening to begin with.
With a large enough telescope (perhaps 100m?) (or array of telescopes using optical interferometry), with powerful enough resolution and if special masking techniques were used to block the glare of the sun, you could see the Earth from Proxima Centauri.





The inverse is true as well. If we build such a telescope in space we may be able to view the continents of earth-like planets around some of the closer stars. Using these techniques we are already able to view and measure the disks of nearby stars. In 10 - 20 years it may be possible to directly view Jupiter sized and even smaller planets around other nearby stars.





It is interesting to me that most who have answered this question assume current earth bound technological abilities instead of thinking about what would be possible theoretically.
Proxima centauri , alpha centauri and beta centauri make a triplet star system . so it is supposed to be very hot . how could you expect a space station there . and it is around a 1oo light years away from earth. by the time you send a space probe to proxima centauri you wil be dead coz man lives only a 100 years and with the technology that we have (super sonic vehicles) it would take more than 400 years. but i can say the size of the earth depends on technological development. or it may appear like the planets in Andromeda which is also 110 light years away i gues.

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