Jump to content

Narrowband

Moon Landing


Recommended Posts

Hi again all ....

Maybe somone can help me with this ( then again maybe i'm just thick ! lol)

have been reading a lot of stuff just recently with regard the moon landings.. theorys etc etc, and i was wondering

if they planted a flag when they landed would the flag still be there (also the remains of the lunar craft )??, and if it was still there, with all the super strong telescopes we have now, could someone not just point it at the place where it should be and see wots there ?

would this not clear up all the theorys straight away ??

thanks

Tris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 47
  • Created
  • Last Reply

The moon is very big (2,160 mi diameter) and the American flag is very small (5ft) The flag, and in fact the whole landing site, occupy less than a pixel even in Hubble.

Perhaps one of the orbiting photo reconnaissance satellites that they are sending up there will be able to see the landing sites.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Possibly the smallest lunar feature to be seen through a scope/CCD would be about 300/400 metres, more realistically features of about 1km are easier to see, I think there is a mission to map the moon due next year, hopefully this will get some photos of the Landers and Neil’s foot print.

But then again I am probably wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have occasionally wondered if any of the stuff we left on the moon (I tend to believe it happened as I was 9 years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and I rememeber it pretty vividly :D) could cast a shadow long enough to be seen from Earth :lol: . When the sun is at certain angles the shadows cast elongate considerably and would be well defined against the lunar surface.

I guess even the longest shadow from say, a Lunar Module base, would be to small to be detected by even the most powerful earth-based scope.

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not an expert on this but doing some rough calculations my 8" (200mm) scope can resolve down to 0.57" and this equates to roughly 1Km on the moon.

The 8m scopes can resolve to 0.0145" not taking into consideration the effect of seeing this gives a resolution of around x40 times better than my scope.

even at this resolution size of object you could see would be around 25m so considerably larger than the lunar module

Please don't take these figures as spot on but they do show the challenge of seeing a small object 2-3m on an object far away 300,000 Km

Cheers

Ian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A shadow of any artifacts left on the moon would be attenuated to nothing before it stretched more than about half a kilometre, and in any case would be too narrow to make an impression. The shadow of the flag wouldn't stretch more than a couple of hundred metres, even if it was at right angles to the sun. Good idea, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wonder if they ever considered leaving some visual sign that they had been there - like a large foil reflector or something ? - I guess they would have never thought that 38 years later not only have we not been back but there is even a (spurious IMHO) debate over whether we ever went there in the fisrt place :lol:

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't they still use those mirrors that one of the Apollo missions intalled on the lunar surface to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon?

Tony..

I think you are right Tony, they bounce lasers off them - I wonder how the "Moon Hoax" theorists deal with that one !.

John

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't they still use those mirrors that one of the Apollo missions intalled on the lunar surface to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon?

Tony..

I think you are right Tony, they bounce lasers off them - I wonder how the "Moon Hoax" theorists deal with that one !.

John

The mirrors aren't all that big, and the conspiracy nuts just say we're faking it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I remember my history correctly they left the ALSEP on the moon, the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. One of the items was a mirror which they bounce laser off to measure the distance to the moon very accurately. I remember seeing a science show some time ago and it showed the little guy whose job it is to visit a shed next to and observatory every so often and take a measurement. They used it to show the moon is very slowly drifting away from us and will one day leave altogether, but the rate of drift is tiny, a centimetre a year or something like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The greatest thing man has achieved and their is allways one. Somebody thinks the twin towers was done by the American gov :binky: we will always have some low IQ geeks out their, They make me laugh because they haven't got a clue about anything :spam1: :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I read somewhere that the best resolution Hubble can manage on the Moon is 85 metres. I think I've managed to pick out craters about 3-4km across with my 250mm Newtonian.

One of my favourite conspiracy websites (I can't remember which) banged on about the usual reasons as to why we hadn't been and then offered a link to another site. This site said that Armstrong and Aldrin had detected an alien presence on the Moon (the same one they hadn't landed on, apparently!) but NASA had hushed this up by manipulating the communication time delay.

As an old boy I once knew used to say that you wouldn't give these people the time of day even if you had a pocketful of watches.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think if I had gone to the moon, I would have left a Snickers bar wrapper behind.

The reason I could never believe in the moon landing as hoax theory is the inability of Americans to keep a secret if more than one knows it. The hundreds of people who would have had to be involved in the hoax would make it impossible for dozens not to have blabbed by now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Come to think of it, does anyone remember that at the time of the first Gemini space-walk (Wally Schirra, if memory serves) a few people were claiming that was a hoax as well, and that Schirra had always had contact with the vehicle?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.