Apollo 11 landing site

[Mike_S]

So I found these tonight. Rough area of the landing site and the Moltke crater. I have seen some with clearer images taken through an iPhone but that was someone with an 11” Celestron SCT. 

This is with a 12” F 5.3 dob and Myriad XWA 3.5mm eyepiece. Can I get much clearer with my scope? 

[John]

You could try less magnification - 450x is a heck of a lot even on the moon and only under the very best seeing conditions and with the scope collimation absolutely spot on will it result in sharp views. With my 12" F/5.3 dob I often get my sharpest views of the moon at around 280x - 320x. Occasionally I can go a little further and still get a sharp view but most of the time things get softer above that sort of magnification, rather than sharper.

 

[Mike_S]

I was struggling to make out the craters with less power but they probably will have been clearer. Will try again next time. 

[John]

Less power usually makes things crisper. I always prefer a smaller scale sharp view to a larger scale mushy one. There are some exceptions to this, usually when I'm searching for a very faint point source such as a supernova or one of the fainter planetary moons.

 

[MarsG76]

How cool... now if you can actually image the landing site equipment, that would be awesome.

 

[MarsG76]

16 minutes ago, John said:

You could try less magnification - 450x is a heck of a lot even on the moon and only under the very best seeing conditions and with the scope collimation absolutely spot on will it result in sharp views. With my 12" F/5.3 dob I often get my sharpest views of the moon at around 280x - 320x. Occasionally I can go a little further and still get a sharp view but most of the time things get softer above that sort of magnification, rather than sharper.

 

I agree...

 

[Mike_S]

9 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

How cool... now if you can actually image the landing site equipment, that would be awesome.

 

How?

[Mike_S]

Can anybody tell me which crater this is by the way please?

[MarsG76]

6 minutes ago, MSammon said:

How?

Some would say that its not possible.. but I'm sure someone will find a way to go that deep and detailed....

 

[Stub Mandrel]

14 hours ago, MSammon said:

This is with a 12” F 5.3 dob and Myriad XWA 3.5mm eyepiece. Can I get much clearer with my scope? 

You should be able to get sharper by stacking and processing. I did this a year ago April, using a 6" f87 - my 150PL.

A good target is to aim to get Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong craters. CXoolins is 2.4km across so resolving it suggests this is pretty much at the theoretical limit for my scope.

 

 

[John]

 

14 hours ago, MSammon said:

Can anybody tell me which crater this is by the way please?

It's Copernicus. I got it myself a little while back with my Tak 100 and my old Samsung mobile:

 

[Mike_S]

2 hours ago, John said:

 

It's Copernicus. I got it myself a little while back with my Tak 100 and my old Samsung mobile:

 

That’s amazing that. What magnification was that at?

[Cup of Tea]

On 12/07/2019 at 01:37, MarsG76 said:

Some would say that its not possible.. but I'm sure someone will find a way to go that deep and detailed....

 

Simple. Just need something about 10 times the size of Hubble.

[MarsG76]

2 hours ago, Cup of Tea said:

Simple. Just need something about 10 times the size of Hubble.

I'm sure that 20 years ago someone would say something similar about imaging the sort of details we're capturing on, for example, Jupiter... perhaps say you need to be in orbit and yet a way was found to penetrate the limitations imposed by the atmosphere.

[vlaiv]

5 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

I'm sure that 20 years ago someone would say something similar about imaging the sort of details we're capturing on, for example, Jupiter... perhaps say you need to be in orbit and yet a way was found to penetrate the limitations imposed by the atmosphere.

One thing is to find a way to fix issues caused by atmosphere (and there is a clear solution for that - get outside of atmosphere), but you can't circumvent laws of physics.

Aperture is needed to resolve smaller detail.

Either single aperture of aperture synthesis - which can be done for visible light as well as for radio waves, but technical challenges might be too much (you need to bring all the light together with precision of optical surface (fraction of wavelength) from optical systems dozens and hundreds of meters apart - person walking around cases so much vibration that it will interfere with equipment at that level of precision).

[Gfamily]

8 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

I'm sure that 20 years ago someone would say something similar about imaging the sort of details we're capturing on, for example, Jupiter... perhaps say you need to be in orbit and yet a way was found to penetrate the limitations imposed by the atmosphere.

Angular resolution rather than atmospherics is the limiting factor for observing the items remaining at the landing sites. 

[Andy0306]

This might help explain 

 

[maw lod qan]

Ah, come on.

We all know the reason you cant see it is they used the warehouse where the landing was photographed for that scene in "The raiders of the lost ark"!

All the Apollo stuff got tossed out!

😎😎😉😉😁

Just kidding!

[Davey-T]

Took this one at fifty years to the second from original landing with 10"SCT.

Forgot to crop it.

Dave

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Davey-T

[Gerry Doyle]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged the various Apollo sites and artifacts (including an impact site from one of the Saturn 5 third stages impacted onto the Moon as a seismic experiment).

Apollo 11: 'A Stark Beauty All Its Own' | NASA

But that, of course was at a couple of hundred miles or less, not 250 000...

[Moonshed]

8 hours ago, Cup of Tea said:

Simple. Just need something about 10 times the size of Hubble.

Sadly it isn’t possible to resolve detail on the lunar surface as small as the Apollo debris, us astronomers appreciate that. Even Hubble above the Earth’s atmosphere can only resolve objects on the lunar surface the size of 86 metres/280 feet or more. 
I get asked every now again why we can’t see the Apollo landing equipment left on the Moon, usually by YouTube hoax believers (Groan). The problem seems to stem from the amazing images we get from Hubble, if we can see galaxies at the very edge of the universe billions of light years away why can’t we see objects on the Moon that’s only 240,000 miles away? I try to explain about resolving power and so on but may as well talk to a budgie. 

 

 

 

[vlaiv]

13 minutes ago, Moonshed said:

Sadly it isn’t possible to resolve detail on the lunar surface as small as the Apollo debris, us astronomers appreciate that. Even Hubble above the Earth’s atmosphere can only resolve objects on the lunar surface the size of 86 metres/280 feet or more. 
I get asked every now again why we can’t see the Apollo landing equipment left on the Moon, usually by YouTube hoax believers (Groan). The problem seems to stem from the amazing images we get from Hubble, if we can see galaxies at the very edge of the universe billions of light years away why can’t we see objects on the Moon that’s only 240,000 miles away? I try to explain about resolving power and so on but may as well talk to a budgie. 

 

 

 

When trying to explain such things to people without necessary background - I find useful to use direct analogy and example.

Ask them if they can spot an ant on that tree that is only 50 feed away. Next, ask them if they see that mountain that is 10 miles away. Then ask them, how come that they can see something that is 10 miles away with ease but can't see something that is 50 feet away from them.

[Moonshed]

35 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

When trying to explain such things to people without necessary background - I find useful to use direct analogy and example.

Ask them if they can spot an ant on that tree that is only 50 feed away. Next, ask them if they see that mountain that is 10 miles away. Then ask them, how come that they can see something that is 10 miles away with ease but can't see something that is 50 feet away from them.

Thanks vlaiv that’s very helpful, something the non-astronomically minded person can understand, apart from moon hoax believers that is because they just don’t get anything!

[JRM]

On 11/07/2019 at 21:37, MarsG76 said:

Some would say that its not possible.. but I'm sure someone will find a way to go that deep and detailed....

 

Like I tell the folks that ask about the landing equipment when looking through my scope,  Hubble space telescope, 96" mirror, what 100 or so miles up there and it can not resolve them with no atmosphere to

go through, It is  going to take a mighty big telescope on the ground to resolve them, maybe in 50 years but hey I wont be around to see it lol.

[Moonshed]

17 hours ago, JRM said:

Like I tell the folks that ask about the landing equipment when looking through my scope,  Hubble space telescope, 96" mirror, what 100 or so miles up there and it can not resolve them with no atmosphere to

go through, It is  going to take a mighty big telescope on the ground to resolve them, maybe in 50 years but hey I wont be around to see it lol.

Should a 100 metre telescope ever be built it will reveal the Apollo landers, the largest objects left behind,  as only two  pixels, which could be anything, so it would need be a lot bigger than that,  can you imagine such a monster?