The American Flag on the Moon

[janndave]

Today's picture got me wondering if we could turn a satellite to the moon to see where our American Flag is, hopefully still standing proud.

[Chris Peterson]

Today's picture got me wondering if we could turn a satellite to the moon to see where our American Flag is, hopefully still standing proud.

You could do this and see the area of each Apollo landing site, but you couldn't see any of the equipment left behind, not even the LEM bases.

The largest telescopes on Earth have a resolution of about 0.01 arcseconds, which translates to 18 meters at the Moon. The Hubble telescope has a resolution of about 0.04 arcseconds, or 70 meters at the Moon. The largest stuff left on the Moon is about 5 meters across. The flag, of course, is very much smaller.

Even though it is impossible with current technology to resolve (from Earth) any artifacts on the Moon, we could possibly detect the long shadows cast by some equipment at sunrise or sunset. Even that would be very difficult, however.

[neufer]

Today's picture got me wondering if we could turn a satellite to the moon to see where our American Flag is, hopefully still standing proud.

You could do this and see the area of each Apollo landing site, but you couldn't see any of the equipment left behind, not even the LEM bases. The largest telescopes on Earth have a resolution of about 0.01 arcseconds, which translates to 18 meters at the Moon. The Hubble telescope has a resolution of about 0.04 arcseconds, or 70 meters at the Moon. The largest stuff left on the Moon is about 5 meters across. The flag, of course, is very much smaller. Even though it is impossible with current technology to resolve (from Earth) any artifacts on the Moon, we could possibly detect the long shadows cast by some equipment at sunrise or sunset. Even that would be very difficult, however.

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Explanation: Can the Hubble Space Telescope take a picture that shows the Apollo lunar modules on the Moon? With its 2.4 metre diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometres is about 80 metres across. So, from low Earth orbit even Hubble's sharp vision can not image the Apollo lunar module descent stages, at most a few metres across, left behind at the lunar landing sites. A space telescope over ten times the size of Hubble could ... or a much smaller telescope in close lunar orbit ( SELENE Kaguya Terrain camera resolution = 10 meters per pixel ). In fact, this picture does just resolve Apollo 17's Lunar Module, Challenger, and its shadow on the cratered floor of the Taurus-Littrow valley in the Moon's Mare Serenitatis. It was taken in 1972 from the Apollo 17 Command Module, America, orbiting about 100 kilometres above the Moon's surface and covers an area about 1.1 kilometres wide. Using a web site created by Dan Durda of Southwest Research Institute, armchair astronauts can explore orbital views of this and the 5 other Apollo lunar landing sites.

If the Lunar Module take off didn't knock it down then the flag flies:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKRkvCKri8

[BMAONE23]

How to pay for the next (future) moon missions and put moon landing hoaxers to rest.
Take a series of 3 color lights pods there (it would take close to a million). Arrange them
in a rough 2000' x 5000' rectangle. Then you could display adverts from the moon that the
entire world could see. (think Giant TV)

[aristarchusinexile]

How to pay for the next (future) moon missions and put moon landing hoaxers to rest.
Take a series of 3 color lights pods there (it would take close to a million). Arrange them
in a rough 2000' x 5000' rectangle. Then you could display adverts from the moon that the
entire world could see. (think Giant TV)

Whatever would be advertised would be stamped "Made in China." Iran has a sattelite! Wow!

[BMAONE23]

Well, to be visible, it would likely just be trademarks and Icons you would likely need to make it 10 times the outer measurements to discern moving images like TV ads. But no one could then deny our visitations there.

[apodman]

... no one could then deny our visitations there.

Either you have great faith in the logical operation of human minds, or I know more than my share of scrambled thinkers. I guarantee I know more than one person who would argue that the technology that fakes a tv screen on the moon is the same as the technology that fakes the yellow line on a football field on a tv on earth. I'd explain their theories on how the yellow line works, but it might result in a bad case of RCI (rectal-cranial inversion).

[astrolabe]

Hello apodman,

I know what you mean, it's like "where do they get them and why do they send them to me?"

[BMAONE23]

... no one could then deny our visitations there.

Either you have great faith in the logical operation of human minds, or I know more than my share of scrambled thinkers. I guarantee I know more than one person who would argue that the technology that fakes a tv screen on the moon is the same as the technology that fakes the yellow line on a football field on a tv on earth. I'd explain their theories on how the yellow line works, but it might result in a bad case of RCI (rectal-cranial inversion).

Ah...but...the technology that fakes the yellow line is a digitally inserted image in the data stream of the broadcast. You can only see it on TV but not live at the game. this you would see live, every night or day.

I like the RCI reference

[makc]

there is no moon, or sun, or stars. it is all just giant tv that surrounds the earth.

[aristarchusinexile]

there is no moon, or sun, or stars. it is all just giant tv that surrounds the earth.

Don't anyone touch the remote!

[aristarchusinexile]

... no one could then deny our visitations there.

Either you have great faith in the logical operation of human minds, or I know more than my share of scrambled thinkers. I guarantee I know more than one person who would argue that the technology that fakes a tv screen on the moon is the same as the technology that fakes the yellow line on a football field on a tv on earth. I'd explain their theories on how the yellow line works, but it might result in a bad case of RCI (rectal-cranial inversion).

Oh yeah! Well how do you explain the yellow lines on highways then!?

[apodman]

there is no moon, or sun, or stars. it is all just giant tv that surrounds the earth.

And they hypnotized us not to remember the 3D-optics corneal enhancement surgery (or maybe there is an invisible refractive layer in Earth's upper atmosphere) so we might enjoy the illusion of parallax. When our telescopes' resolution becomes finer than one pixel at screen distance, there will be no further need for improvement. Or we could just get the DVD and see it at full resolution on our home screens.

[makc]

Or we could just get the DVD and see it at full resolution on our home screens.

I think this is already being done:

[neufer]

Or we could just get the DVD and see it at full resolution on our home screens.

I think this is already being done:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... veaway.jpg

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... veaway.jpg
is a very disturbing image IMO.