Figure 3-14 Resolution The larger the diameter of a telescope’s primary mirror, the finer the detail the telescope can resolve. These two images of the Andromeda Galaxy, taken through telescopes with different diameters, show this effect. (a) A lower-resolution image taken through a smaller telescope. I n this photograph most individual stars blur together to make the galaxies look like fuzzy blobs. (b) The same field of view through a larger-diameter telescope. Many more individual stars and interstellar gas clouds are visible here than in (a). Increasing the exposure time of the smaller-diameter telescope (a) will only brighten the image, not improve the resolution.