Did man land on the moon?

[marinyork]

One of the landings was supposedly on The Sea of Tranquility. This is on the near side of the moon, so should be visible with a powerful enough telelscope.

In theory. In practise it's an average of about a quarter of a million miles away to resolve images that are very small and may not be lit up particularly well. If you work out the resolving power of say a 10m optical telescope or even the resolving power of something like the Keck at about 0.05 arc seconds it seems unlikely. The moon is only about 30 arc minutes across. If you apply this in a quick calculation (that may be wrong) the two telescopes combined don't stand a chance.

 

[Maz]

In theory. In practise it's an average of about a quarter of a million miles away to resolve images that are very small and may not be lit up particularly well. If you work out the resolving power of say a 10m optical telescope or even the resolving power of something like the Keck at about 0.05 arc seconds it seems unlikely. The moon is only about 30 arc minutes across. If you apply this in a quick calculation (that may be wrong) the two telescopes combined don't stand a chance.

Are there any orbiting satellites/stations or maybe that Indian rocket that was sent up recently...can't they take some close-up pictures?

 

[LLB]

No Idea for certain that man landed on the moon, but we certainly went there - My dad said so

 

[marinyork]

Are there any orbiting satellites/stations or maybe that Indian rocket that was sent up recently...can't they take some close-up pictures?

Well there's Hubble but that doesn't stand a chance either. There has been a japanese orbiter and a there is this indian one. I suspect (but don't know) it will be able to get much better resolution but maybe not good enough. The instruments include other things for other purposes that takes up space. If it was dedicated solely to getting high quality optical pictures then maybe. The lowest it will orbit will be 62 miles. Of about the order of some optical pictures taken here of the earth's surface.

 

[Tetedelacourse]

Ha ha, let's send a camera to the moon to take pictures of something we put there a few years ago. Ground-breaking!

Sooner or later, everyone has to take a leap of faith, even in science. It's just a question of when you leap!

 

[ArDee]

Ha ha, let's send a camera to the moon to take pictures of something we put there a few years ago. Ground-breaking!

Sooner or later, everyone has to take a leap of faith, even in science. It's just a question of when you leap!

Even then the conspiracy theorists will say that this is faked and the probe never went to the moon to take the photos; but, was launched to land somewhere in the Utah dessert.

 

[PrettyboyTim]

There's a great site that has loads of the photos from the Apollo missions on it:

http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html

They're worth looking through if you're unconviced at the reality of the moon landings. I found the one that (I think) Buggi was talking about where the shadows on the moon appear too dark when compared to the astronaut.

But the thing you have to remember is that the lunar soil is actually a fairly dark grey colour. The astronaut, being white, reflects vastly more light than the lunar surface and is therefore visible in much lower lighting conditions.

There's a good picture where you can see the colour of the lunar surface here:

 

[LLB]

Our boys tracked them from our tracking stations when they went to the moon and back. I have no doubt the Russians did so as well....

 

[Fnaar]

worth a chuckle
http://moonlanding2.blogspot.com/2006/08/first-contest-video.html

 

[Maz]

There was talk of the Coca-Cola company planning a mission to the moon and painting the nearside in red to look like their logo. Imagine that, looking up into the sky at night and seeing Coke!

 

[Tetedelacourse]

Then they'd just get accused of trying to simulate the red martian surface, which, contrary to populist conspiracy theorists, was not put into space by Mars confectionary.

 

[Kovu]

There was talk of the Coca-Cola company planning a mission to the moon and painting the nearside in red to look like their logo. Imagine that, looking up into the sky at night and seeing Coke!

Am I the only one who thinks that would be hilarious?

Wasn't there talks of the moon being bought by a man a while ago, the americans sold it to him ... makes me laugh that they think they own the moon.

 

[Dayvo]

Am I the only one who thinks that would be hilarious?

Probably!

 

[beanzontoast]

Am I the only one who thinks that would be hilarious?

Wasn't there talks of the moon being bought by a man a while ago, the americans sold it to him ... makes me laugh that they think they own the moon.

40 years ago the United Nations Outer Space Treaty stipulated that that no country can own a celestial body. There's another treaty specifically to do with the Moon which I believe prohibits private ownership.

(Wait for it...)

 

[yello]

I'm waiting. Who didn't sign it?!