Can we see evidence of us on the moon?

[Steve922]

Is there anything on the moon caused by us which we can see from Earth? I've been loking at the Virtual Moon Altlas (great freebie!) and I see there are a number of sites marked of landings or crashes of our hardware. I was wondering if any of these are visible through a telescope. If so, how much magnification would you need?

Steve

[Doc]

I doubt if a normal ameteur telescope could. Maybe an observatory based one similar to the one in Chile might.

[supernova]

Even Hubble cant see the moon that good sorry.

[Doc]

Talking about hubble...

Can we see hubble like we can see the ISS. I kknow the ISS is alot bigger but...

[Astronut]

I don't think there are any telescopes capable of the resolution required to see something that small on the Moon's surface from Earth.

If a telescope has a resolving power of 0.5 arcseconds then that translates to the smallest object that can be theorectically seen on the Moon's surface from Earth is 1.1 miles across. Even this theoretical maximum resolution would be limited by the atmospheric seeing conditions.

http://www.stargazing.net/naa/scopemath.htm

Hubble's angular resolution is about 0.043 arcseconds which would translate to an object on the Moon about a 1/10th of a mile across (rough calculation) which is still quite a lot bigger than any man-made object on the Moon. Hubble isn't limited by atmospheric seeing either.

Also Hubble's orbit never brings it above the UK horizons.

[supernova]

I don't think there are any telescopes capable of the resolution required to see something that small on the Moon's surface from Earth.

Also Hubble's orbit never brings it above the UK horizons.

I new that

Ahem.

[Talitha]

Great link Ian, thanks!

[phil_the_bassist]

Kinda continuing this, would we be able to view Chandrayaan-1, the indian Lunar Orbiter from here? I'm guessin, as it'll be mapping the entire surface, that we'll possibly get several viewings?

Still a noob, apologies if I'm obviously wrong

[blackgerby]

There's nothing that we can see, but I believe there are some reflectors (not telescopes) that can have lasers bounced off them, that were left on the moon.

[FLO]

Whilst we cannot see anything from Earth, a Japanese lunar stellite has "imaged the 'halo' left behind in the lunar surface from Apollo 15's lunar module engine exhaust plume."

More here: http://tinyurl.com/5goqte

[ChrisEdu]

There's nothing that we can see, but I believe there are some reflectors (not telescopes) that can have lasers bounced off them, that were left on the moon.

There are indeed - they bounce lasers off them to measure the distance.

[FLO]

They say the task of aiming the laser is like using a rifle to hit a moving penny two miles away :shock:

[ChrisEdu]

Easy enough!

[Talitha]

They were laser ranging retroreflector experiments left on the lunar surface by Apollo 11, Apollo 14 and Apollo 15. I'm sure Google will show some hits if you want to read up on them.

And here's a page which has images of the shadows cast by the Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 lunar landers (taken from the orbiting CSMs).