Observing the Apollo Landing Sites

[John]

This has probably been posted before but I've not seen it for a while.

As someone who was 9 years old when man first walked on the Moon I recall these events quite vividly and they were a key contributor to my ending up in the hobby of astronomy.

During the past year, I've been enjoying studying the area at the edge of the Mare Imbrium where the Apollo 15 mission landed and explored and I thought I'd make a project over the coming months to locate and observe the other parts of the Moon explored by the other 5 Apollo missions during the early 1970's.

I've come across this website which I think may help so I thought I'd post the link in case others are also interested:

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/Apollo/landing_sites.html

[alan potts]

Sounds like a good project John, I find it sad looking back how after the first landing it needed a space accident to rekindle interest in the States, I recall there was still a good interest in the full program in Britain right up to the final mission. I always find it difficult to understand that the average phone has more computing power than anything they were using on the space flights, a great achievement.

I am getting more interested in the Moon these days and with this new mirror I will be looking using RayBans, if it ever stops snowing.

Alan 

[John]

Last week my son and I visited the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton in Somerset. Looking at the exhibits on early powered flight was a reminder of how amazing it was that we got from the Wright Brothers 1st flight in 1903 with their canvas, wood and wire Flyer 1 to Neil Armstrong stepping off the LEM less than 66 years later.

[leelee970]

Great link, loved zooming in on each landing site. Thanks.

Lee

[alan potts]

Yes John something I sat and thought about a few times when sitting on a Jumbo, though we didn't go to the Moon.

I think of a similar giant step in communications. When I was about 10 back in 66, the neighbour across the road would come and say my Dad was on the phone, he was an Officer at sea for BP on tankers, Len and Jean were the only ones with a phone. If anyone would have told me just over thirty years later you could have a divice that was smaller than a pack of cigs that you could talk to people all over the world on, I think most would have laughed out load. Now the dam things are replacing laptops.

Alan

[ronin]

My "complaint" is that I would have liked to have seen a dot marking the actual locations.

Then it would be possible to print the image and use the whole thing as a bit of an obseving exercise.

Not difficult when we can see the full face but I feel nicer to have a very specific target/section of the moon to aim at and identify.

There tends to be people asking for an observing list and this seems to fall into being one.

[Stu]

That's an excellent site John, will definite have a look at these.

As you say, pretty amazing achievement in 66 years!

[Mark at Beaufort]

To test the quality of optics and your seeing it's good to try and view the craters Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins. These objects are part of the Lunar 100 list. Another good area to view is Hadley Rille.

I have not tried to view specifically the landing sites of the other Apollo sites but I will have a go.

I had been married only 5 weeks when Apollo 11 landed and I will never forget the view through a 12" KB black and white TV. I was also pleased to be invited to Sussex University when the first Moon rock arrived in the UK for research work.

So long ago

[John]

If anyone is visiting the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff they have an excellent geology section with some nice meteorites and one of the best chunks of moon rock that I've seen, and that includes at the Kennedy Space Centre in the USA. The Museum of Wales sample was returned by the Apollo 12 mission:

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/rhagor/article/moonrock/