the moon

[jimmythemoonlight]

Hi all looked out of the window at 3am Thursday morning and saw clearish skies so dashed to the shed to get my telescope out had enough time to see a stunning moon with my planetary 7.5 EP and looked north south east and west and what views I got my question though is would it be possible to make out the landing sites made by the Apollo landings ie the tracks made by the lunar buggies or the tracks made by the men themselves as I thought I could to the far north of the moon and the deepest south I may be totally wrong here but if I am what are those lines leading from what looks like a big crater spreading outwards on a more easier note tried to use a orange ep filter and it kept on falling off tried to see the deep field Hubble space but as i did the rains came round 4am nevertheless I consider myself very fortunate to have seen the moon in such stunning clarity and depth I hope someone will read my post and give me some answers many thanx one and all. Jimmy

[Tiny Small]

You won't be able to see the landing sites. Even with a very high power ep, the small craters you see are about 60km across!! Remember that the disc of the full moon is roughly the same area as africa!

[RichieP]

Not even the largest earth based telescopes would be able to resolve detail that small. You would need to be in orbit around the moon to see that!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

These sites and tracks are indeed too small to see from earth. They have been imaged by lunar orbiters, however:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/revisited/#.U-xsYNa6vyM

[Cornelius Varley]

The streaks you see coming from the craters (especially Tycho) are ejecta rays caused by debris being thrown out from meteor impacts.

[Blazar]

Jimmy,

You mentioned an orange filter...and it kept falling off?. These should not fall off if correctly screwed into the base of the EP (as long as you have the correct sized filter and EP). You can spend an entire evening wandering around the moons surface with a scope....awesome stuff.

[stevend]

Although you cannot see the landing sites themselves it is always worthwhile looking at the general areas; knowing you are looking at a region where man has been. A good start is Apollo 11 - try looking for the craters Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. The best chance is when the terminator is nearby so +5 days a new moon after or +4 days after a full moon (which happens to be tonight).

[bingevader]

When did we go to the moon!? I thought it was a ll a hoax. 

[Rihard]

Hi all looked out of the window at 3am Thursday morning and saw clearish skies so dashed to the shed to get my telescope out had enough time to see a stunning moon with my planetary 7.5 EP and looked north south east and west and what views I got my question though is would it be possible to make out the landing sites made by the Apollo landings ie the tracks made by the lunar buggies or the tracks made by the men themselves as I thought I could to the far north of the moon and the deepest south I may be totally wrong here but if I am what are those lines leading from what looks like a big crater spreading outwards on a more easier note tried to use a orange ep filter and it kept on falling off tried to see the deep field Hubble space but as i did the rains came round 4am nevertheless I consider myself very fortunate to have seen the moon in such stunning clarity and depth I hope someone will read my post and give me some answers many thanx one and all. Jimmy

The signs left by humans during the Apollo missions will be too small to be resolved from Earth with an amateur telescope, as the distance is too great and the detail is too small. Even to see a car on Earth from space, we need powerful spy telescopes looking down directly from Earth orbit;

This is what NASA's LRO was able to see from up close (from moon orbit).

[John]

While the actual equipment and tracks of the Apollo landing missions are not visible in our equipment, some of the geographical features that the astronauts visited can be seen though small to moderate telescopes. For example, the Hadley Rille and Mount Hadley visited by the Apollo 15 mission can be seen under the right lunar lighting conditions amongst the Lunar Apennine Mountains  on the edge of the Mare Imbrium.

[jimmythemoonlight]

Hi guys thanx very much for sorting out that problem nevertheless i still had a wonderful night outside looking at my favorite object in the night sky. I don't know what it is about the moon i could look at it all night and very nearly did that night but as I held my tablet up to the north it told me that Ursa major was just above the horizon so i just had to turn around and look at that great specticle in the night sky but the moon was by far the most dynamic and most beautiful the details on the great big circle in the sky were outstanding and more than lived up to my expectation i could see all over it and it seemed in every detail possible the huge crators the big mountains the cloud going around it all the different shades of grey,black and a hint of brown it was indeed the best time i had ever had in just one hour anyway that's enough from me for now once again a great big thank you to all of you lovely people for responding to my question cheers. Jimmy