So far we only have a very pixelated telescope image from which it was discovered, like Pluto before the New Horizons probe fly-by.
HD here means can display with its diameter spanning 50% across the width of a typical smartphone screen without visible pixelation.
The JWST image of Neptune can indicate whether that would be capable (no in my opinion).
@jks let's say no because based on the rest of this thread the chances are already pretty slim without adding extra conditions lol
Even if there was the money and interest in launching a probe to Eris to get New Horizons-style pictures, there'd be no time. Eris is more than 50% farther away than Pluto is (40 vs 68 AU), and I don't know to what extent the launch of New Horizons was timed based on convenient positions of Jupiter and Pluto in their respective orbits, which might not be present for Eris. And even then it took the probe nine years to get there.
@TimDuffy yeah I don't think it would be good enough with JWST, I just mentioned that since my web searches indicated that was the next main thing space agencies plan to do with Eris. I'm thinking the plausible scenarios involve significant reprioritisation and/or technological breakthroughs regarding telescope resolution and/or probe speeds, possibly due to AGI. Overall my estimate is something like 10% probability. Also I suspect markets resolving more than a decade away tend to decay significantly in their appeal and predictive accuracy due to lack of short term mana profit. Meanwhile you have folks asking if we'll have manned missions to Pluto this year lol
@TheAllMemeingEye I don't think this would resolve YES even if the shortest AI timelines happen.
Eris is really far away.
@BrunoParga Even if AGI gets us solar sails, fusion engines, antimatter engines etc? Or just significantly better telescopes?
@TheAllMemeingEye I'd still be surprised if it happened by 2030, especially because, um, nobody except J. Jonah Jameson really wants pictures of Eris that bad, so an aligned AI would have little reason to spend resources on that. (And if the AI is not aligned we won't be seeing any pictures of anything.)
@BrunoParga hey until we get pictures we can't 100% rule out that it is in fact a dormant death-star-esque space station, or a giant smiley face /s
@BrunoParga It being both reminds me of this SMBC comic about tiling the universe with hedonium: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happy-3
@BrunoParga in all seriousness what would be your predicted lower and upper bounds on plausible years we'll get pictures, given no human extinction?
@TheAllMemeingEye Pluto-quality pictures? Hmm... the question itself anchors me.
If it is physically possible to get that quality of pictures from the inner solar system, with JWST or the Nancy Grace Roman telescope or some successor, then my over/under is like 2044. If it isn't and it would require a probe to physically go there, then maybe 2069. So 50% it has happened by each of those dates, conditional on no extinction. I'd expect the technology to do so to be available in principle quite a bit earlier, it's just that Eris is not that important - there are, what, half a dozen known dwarf planets in the plutino/twotino/cubewano region? These estimates might change a bit if I knew where in its orbit Eris is, though - New Horizons was made significantly more likely, I think, by the fact that Pluto perihelioned around 1989, so even in 2015 it was still relatively close to the Sun.
@TheAllMemeingEye update: Eris is bigger than I thought - it is possibly the most massive object that orbits the Sun and is not a planet. So that changes one of the factors in my reasoning: it is somewhat more important/noteworthy than I previously thought. This moves the estimates forward by maybe 2-3 years?