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Originally Posted by Toutatis
It seems this entire matter could be readily settled via Ground-Based telescopic examination of said landing site[s] (Ground based such that the skeptics might 'have a gander' for themselves) Comments???
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This has been discussed a lot. More expert people can give you numbers but the simple truth is that no current telescope is capable of the required resolution. There is also the issue that no-one is prepared to waste valuable time on such a pointless exercise. The Rusty Lander once made a similar proposal
here.
Very quick back-of-an-envelope calculation - if I (generously) assume that at the right time the LM base might cast a shadow of 5 metres, at a mean distance of 385,000km to the moon, this shadow will subtend an angle of ~0.003 arcseconds. This is roughly the equivalent to trying to see a 10c piece in Melbourne with a telescope in Sydney.
Ignoring interferometry techniques etc, a 10m reflector will have diffraction limited resolution of ~0.02 arcseconds (rough calc assuming 700nm wavelength light). I would say we are at least an order of magnitude away from being able to image the Apollo remnants on the moon with an earth-bound telescope, even (as Glom has noted) if we would want to waste valuable telescope time on such a spurious exercise.