Telescope & Lunar observing

[racolvin]

Had lunch with a buddy today and we got into an interesting discussion about a fringe group of folks that are convinced we never went to the moon - that it was all a contrived Hollywood thing.

While I have no desire to cater to nutjobs, it did get us thinking: We left a pile of stuff up there so why can't someone with a good enough telescope just point the stuff out and show it to them? Why can't I look through a telescope from earth and be able to read the NASA logo on the side of the bottom have of the lunar lander, see the flag planted in the lunar surface, or see the moon buggy that got left behind?

I mean heck, if the Hubble can take pictures of stuff billions of light years away, why are some serious close-up shots of the inner planets and the moon easily possible?

I have no background in optics or anything like that so I thought I would post here and see what the geniuses can 'splain to me

 

[racolvin]

Well nevermind, I found an answer

Why you can't see that stuff we left on the moon

 

[f95toli]

What you CAN do, however, if to fire a big laser at the mirrors that were left behind. This is done at a regular basis, and if you know when and where to look AND you are in the right place (close to the laser) you can see the reflected light.
I actually saw a TV show where they used this "trick" to convince a guy that the moon landings were real (they even let him press the button).
Btw, the laser/mirror setup is used to monitor the distance between the moon and earth and has been used on a regular basis for something like 30 years now.

 

[racolvin]

Well I was more curious to see how the gear left up there looks these days - has it fallen apart or is it still as pristine as they left it? or has it been hit at all by meteorites, etc?

 

[KIAman]

Originally posted by: racolvin
Well I was more curious to see how the gear left up there looks these days - has it fallen apart or is it still as pristine as they left it? or has it been hit at all by meteorites, etc?

Without a significant atmosphere or any other reactives and biology, my guess is that they are in pristine condition. Also, meteorites bombard the moon almost as much as the earth but statistically, it should be very rare that a meteorite would ever come near any of the gear.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

i wouldn't be surprised to find our old moon gear has been dented like a golf ball, or holes blasted through it.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Trying to resolve 1 meter size range objects at a distance of something like 386 million meters is difficult.

It'd subtend an angle of something like 0.0005 seconds of arc, beyond the resolving power of effectively any conventional optical telescope.

Atmospheric distortion would also cause problems in accurately imaging the debris.

Nevertheless, using OLBI and similar techniques one could hope to image the artifacts with a moderately feasible setup, and I predict that within a few years that this will be accomplished if only for a test / demonstration of the equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution

As you can see, a telescope array on the order of 150 meters x 150 meters could get into the ball park of angular resolution to conduct such imaging.

As can be learned from the following information, an instrument much like a fully realized COAST telescope or a somewhat more capable version of it would get into the realm of being able to achieve such resolutions:
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/telescopes/coast/index.html

 

[QuixoticOne]

The next question is, who's going to go there, bring some back, and sell it on eBAY to help fund the mission?

 

[JTsyo]

Originally posted by: f95toli
What you CAN do, however, if to fire a big laser at the mirrors that were left behind. This is done at a regular basis, and if you know when and where to look AND you are in the right place (close to the laser) you can see the reflected light.
I actually saw a TV show where they used this "trick" to convince a guy that the moon landings were real (they even let him press the button).
Btw, the laser/mirror setup is used to monitor the distance between the moon and earth and has been used on a regular basis for something like 30 years now.

If I had doubted the moon landings then I wouldn't let that convince me since it would be much easier to just land a mirror on the moon.

If the moon landings were fakes you know the USSR would have called us on it.

 

[QuixoticOne]

...or the mirror could have already been there, perhaps the reflection from the obelisk or pyramid or alien dome....... Or on a satellite that isn't on the moon, but in front of it...j/k
http://www.inconstantmoon.com/
http://moon.google.com/

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: JTsyo

Originally posted by: f95toli
What you CAN do, however, if to fire a big laser at the mirrors that were left behind. This is done at a regular basis, and if you know when and where to look AND you are in the right place (close to the laser) you can see the reflected light.
I actually saw a TV show where they used this "trick" to convince a guy that the moon landings were real (they even let him press the button).
Btw, the laser/mirror setup is used to monitor the distance between the moon and earth and has been used on a regular basis for something like 30 years now.

If I had doubted the moon landings then I wouldn't let that convince me since it would be much easier to just land a mirror on the moon.

If the moon landings were fakes you know the USSR would have called us on it.

I've found that the best argument with people not convinced that they were real is just that - we were in a race with Russia and we beat them. At that point, they're usually unconvinced, what works is - and you know they were listening to our communications, right? They were certainly listening in. And, you realize that they can tell from what direction those communications came, right? i.e. you point your big antenna toward USA and you hear one half of the conversation, and you point your other big antenna toward the moon and you hear the other half, right?