Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember watching the news awhile back (a couple of years ago), and they showed on NBC news (supposedly where this moron, Bart Sibrel worked Part-time) picture of the U.S. flag and the rover on the Moon. I'm not sure, but if you had a clear night, a Telescope of say 11 inches (like perhaps a really nice Mead) or bigger, say, a really large professional, building mounted one; and the moon was at it's Perigee, could you not acutally see all the bits and pieces left behind by the awesome Apollo Astronuats?

Could you not see the foot prints, the knocked over flag from the lander's take off, as well as the rovers we left all over the place?

I don't know if someone has brought this up before as I am new to this board and have not had time to read all the posts yet, so if this is a repeat I appologize.

It seems that while all the hard core science (which is AWESOME, thanks Phil! and fellow Bad Astronomers) that has been used to debunk these conspiracy morons, this never seems to get mentioned?!?

Is it not possible? It seems that if we can see things light years away, could we not see this stuff and end the debate?

Has it not been said in the "Principle Of Parsimony" that, "Often times enough, the simplest solution, is the best solution." (para-phrased)?

Well, would not collecting these lunar conspiracy morons together, at say a large Planetarium like the Adler Planetarium or some such place, and showing them the debris on the moon, right next the foot prints just shut them the hell up already?!?!? Would this not be the best most elegant solution? To just show them (in real time) we were actually there?

After all if they are so "convinced" it should be no problem for people like Bart, to go there and look through the Telescope the next time its at it's perigee then he can shut up and leave Buzz and the others alone already so we can all spend more time doing things that matter...

Any help on this would be appreciated, thanx

P.S. I DO realize that if if this is true and you could see that stuff on the moon with a good telescope, these Conspiracy Nutz, would most like just blatently ignore it, simply because, admitting the ultimate commen sense that they saw "our stuff" on the moon would defeat their search for relevance....then again it may give way to all new conspiacies...perhaps that NASA hired Gnomes to some how paint a holgram of our equipment on the moon, on all the lens used today, in all of the telescopes of the world, that OF COURSE....only shows up against the grey dreary backdrop of the moon...to keep the hoax alive [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]


_________________
Learn, Live, and Talk,

The All Mighty Majestic

http://www.aliencoffeetable.com

*There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
-Frank Zappa

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Majestic on 2002-09-23 16:06 ]</font>

I don't remember exactly which post it is in but I have seen it discussed on here before that we currently have no telescopes with a high enough resolution to see the objects left on the moon. Even the Hubble is unable to make them out when looking at the Moon.

<a name="20020923.12:54"> page 20020923.12:54 aka Why BooTHer
On 2002-09-23 15:58, Majestic wrote: To? HUb's 386/20
1: of Course the mention of the upcomming
2: Lunar "Perigee" {when the Moons New}
Could you not see the foot3:
4: Does trigger some reaction {in my finger}
5: So sure I recall the foot prints ? Why?
6: A mexican was putting in the new Lawn
7: around "Harrison Hall" now some other name
8: and I recall how he carefully {there at PSU}
9: left his footprint in the soft soil ..
psuMRG
psuVB
psuVB
psuMRG
<LI> PSU
PSU Geology Department
PSU geology
http://www.geol.pdx.edu/Aml/
http://www.oit.pdx.edu/irs/multimedia/
http//:nwdata.geol.pdx.edu/OR-Geology/
PSU geology
PSU's streeter
_________________ Projects
anyway there moral of the story was
I was ban "FOR TWO YEARS" from going
as the police state UNIVERSALLY proclaimed itself
-------------------
So Shirley i will be opposed
and yes i recall all the "stuff" left lying about
mostly computers parts & moniters
=================================
but keep in mind When the Mac's were installed::
the ones that talked:: and "WOULD LISTEN" .. those lasted just
on short term and then it was back to the current sustem: I call Dumb.. {believe whatevr you like}

The stars can be seen from such great distances because they emit light against a dark background. It's not a question of resolution. The astronaut's equipment does not emit light, and the reflected light does not stand out against the background enough to see.

best regards,

Dana

That's it! Dana, you're a genius.

PS: The BA himself answered a question similar to the OP, in this thread. I found it by using the search function, and searching for any post that included all three of the terms "apollo," "resolution,' and "telescope." There were a dozen or so threads returned, but I just looked at the earliest.

<font size=-1>[Added PS]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: GrapesOfWrath on 2002-09-23 21:06 ]</font>

Welcome to the board Majestic. It's a good question, but as pointed out, it can't be done.

It's not just a question of light source though that is one problem. It's mostly due to resolving power. It's a simple question of optics. The Hubble telescope, for example, takes photos of some very dim objects very far away, but these galaxies and nebulae and whatnot are still VERY big. Angle-wise, they still cover a large enough area of the sky to get good pictures of.

Aim it at the Moon however, and the resolvable angle is not enough to see such small details. At that distance, the small size of the Apollo landing equipment doesn't span a large enough area to be seen.

You'd either need a VERY large telescope from Earth distance, or a pretty good telescope in lunar orbit to pick up that amount of detail.

Here's a very nice lunar debunking site I just found with a good section on why we can't use the Hubble (or any other scope for that matter:
http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Did%20...n%20the%20Moon

And here's one the previous discussions we've had on this topic:
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...c=1051&forum=3

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Nice link David.

Love this pic, hadn't seen it before-



How do the HBers explain this one?

__________________
"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

"Trying to wrap my head around creationist astronomy is like trying to ride a unicycle around a Moebius strip: it’s off-balance, physically impossible, full of one-sided arguments, and in the end you don’t go anywhere." Phil Plait

Hmmmm, Netscape seems to have a problem with the picture link in my last post, works okay with IE though....

Thanks for the help folks. I appreciate it. It just seems strange that in the 21st. century our optics are still too grungy to get something that close...bummer....would have made for a great Perry Mayson Moment.....sorry about the repeat

_________________
Learn, Live, and Talk,

The All Mighty Majestic

http://www.aliencoffeetable.com

*There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
-Frank Zappa

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Majestic on 2002-09-24 00:03 ]</font>

Glad to help. Don't worry about repeating it. Stuff like this kinda needs to get dug up again after a while so that new people can find out about it.

But it's not a case of our optics being grungy, it's a simple matter of optical physics. In order to see something small, you either have to get very close, or get a very large magnifier. Both are beyond our capacity at the moment, though there are some coming lunar missions that might be able to spot the lunar landers. TransOrbital in fact is explicitly trying to do just that.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

It just seems strange that in the 21st. century our optics are still too grungy to get something that close.

It's not the grunginess of the optics, it's simply their size. The resolving power of an optical system (even a theoretically perfect one) is mathematically computed from the diameter of the primary mirror or lens. In order to see something, say, a foot in size on the lunar surface from here (fine enough to make out Apollo remnants) you'd have to have a mirror measured in miles.

What I find throws people off is those wonderful photos of the the Earth from Earth orbit. The moon is so "ever present" and "bright" that it seems nearby. People forget to do the math -- distance to orbiting satelite about 250 miles, distance to moon about 250,000 miles.

When out observing with my 8-in scope and showing people Lunar features at a magnification of 800x or even 1000x (when the air permits), they are astonished when I tell them those tiny craters just visible in the eyepiece are 5 km across.

All right here it goes *as he is ducking for cover* [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Apparently according to Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii it can be done–theoritcally, but not with components measuring in miles....get this..but in feet...within 100 feet.

The BA himself did answer this question and he is technically still right. but check out this bad *** mami jami...here's an excerp from the IfA in Hawaii

HDRT stands for High Dynamic Range Telescope

"As it is now envisioned, the telescope would be about 100 feet in height, its mirrors would be 80 feet across, and the moving mass of the telescope and its structure would be about 350 tons. The light-collecting area of the HDRT would be over 350 square yards, and it would have optical resolution of about 0.005 arcseconds, sufficient to see a basketball on the surface of the Moon."

this Page was written by a Dr. Jeff Kuhn, who is apparently one of the big drivers of this monster scope...check it out, here is the link

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/sleo..._concept.shtml

I found some other stuff on this monster but I can't tell how new it is, maybe if more people start looking one of us will find out if they are actually gonna build this puppy, cause that would be bad ***.....assuming it works [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] And man if they're right..if it can see a basket ball, it ain't gonna have a problem with foot prints, rover components, or much of anything..just imagine the things we'll get to see out there...cool!

well anyway I'm gonna keep looking for more on this and similar projects. I'll post it here or maybe just the Genral Astronomy Area...

input would be great...BA you watching?..I bet you've heard of this thing. is it a pipe dream? I bet with your knowledge and connections it should be a snap to tell if this if thing is possible or just theoretical "Brain Candy", be great if you could help.

It looks amazing, but so did the Automatic Road Laying machine and The Flying Cars that everyone (futurists) predicted...don't know about you guys but the last i checked Roads still need "Union" workers and my car still has 4 wheels.

I gonna go out on a limb here. I've read some of the theories behind the thing, and while I'm and not remotely a physics major (Computer Science is my world) it seems pretty reasonable, and may actually work..again, if they build it.. anyway I've rambled enough in my exhuasted hyper-excitment over this thing...I'm gonna save some bandwidth stop writing and slip straight in to a coma

Thanks everbody, for your input, you guys rock! I've learned alot from my first post here and look forward to fumbling through some more posts in the future [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

P.S. And YES I do realize that if this thing works and they do build it, there is now way in perdition that they are gonna let a bunch of space cases look through just to proove we went, where we went...however...if Trans Orbital were to leave a basket ball next to Mr. Armstrong's boot print..it would give them an excuse to point it there and take a look ...hehehehe


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Majestic on 2002-09-25 06:40 ]</font>

I hadn't heard of this one before. It looks like a pretty good concept for a scope. Instead of a lot of smaller mirrors in a mosaic, it arranges only a few large ones in an optimal design. It would certainly be easier to build than some other designs.

But as for size, how about this monster? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...pe_020724.html

Thank you for the vote of confidence. This place certainly is addictive. Keep those questions coming! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Well, seeing a basketball and being able to recognize it as a basketball are two different resolutions--but I seem to be having difficulty with the math anyway.

.005 arcseconds resolution is only about a few hundred times better than the telescope I carryon airlines.

At the distance to the moon of 384,400 kilometers, .005 arcsecond resolution is only 384400 x 1000 m x 2pi / (360 x 60 x 60 x 1/.005), only 9.3 meter resolution. That would be a big basketball!

So a foot, roughly .288 meters, takes up roughly .00015 arcsecond viewed from the earth? Even if we had something that could resolve this, I doubt you would recognize footprints, but you could possibly see the paths of the rovers and the general disturbance of the ground where the astronauts walked.

Well David I think that vote of confidence is true..., why..cause all things being equal I think everyone here is interested in the truth, and I think even if most of us are wrong (including me) I think we are bound to figure this thing out.

and even if we don't figure it out (anything we may discuss)...it's the process of learning and research, trying to find out if we are all nutz or or not thats more important.

It's been my experience, that often times, the journey is more rewarding than the destination. so hey, I still say you guys rocks!...after all I'm not gonna get this kind of mental action on a forum about party etiquette...although they tell me it get instense in it's own way over there [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

thanks for the info on the OWL, that thing IS huge looks like 3/4 size of the St. Louis arch...yikes!, but at 1 Billion Euro that's gonna be a rough purchase....heheh keep it coming

According to the Hubble site, its relolution is .05 arcseconds. *Not* .005 as others have said. http://hubble.stsci.edu/sci.d.tech/n...s/res101.shtml

Quastion: What is the diameter of sphere 500ly away subtending and angle of .05 arcseconds? And arcsecond is 1/3600 degree and .05 times that is 1.39*10^-5 degrees, or 2.42*10^-7 radians. (One rad is 57.30 deg).
At such small angles, the tangent is almost equal to the angle. So the tangent is 2.42*10^-7= x/500ly. x=1.21*10^-4 lyr.One lyr is 9.46*10^15 m and the the diameter of my object is 1.15*10^12 m, about 800 times the diameter of the Sun. And with a distance of 384 Mm, the distance to the Moon, the resolution is 93m.

So great resolution is not the secret to seeing the stars. The Apollo objects are also beyond the resolution of the Hubble. And would need to emit enough light to be distinguished from the lunar background-and they don't.

best regards,

Dana

Er, Dana_Mix, I don't think anyone said that *Hubble's* resolution was 0.005 arcseconds. They said that this was what was intended for a new telescope.

I think the idea is that resolution is the most important thing generally. You need a scope that can resolve to a certain angular size in order for objects of that size to be visible. And that's just to get it to show up at all. If you want any detail you'd need even greater resolution. Example: a 30m resolution on the Moon is going to show a 30m object as only a single pixel.

However, if the object is smaller than the resolving ability of the scope, it can still be detected if it's highly luminous. Photons from the object can be gathered by the scope and turned into a visible object in the field of view. But you aren't going to be able to resolve anything about it. It's going to be just a point-source.

A perfect example is the challenge of "splitting" close binary stars. A small scope will see them as a single object, but if you use a larger scope (with greater resolution), you will be able to split the source into it's separate components. And it's easily calculable as to how large a scope you will need to split any particular binary based on it's angular separation.

So, for the Apollo remnants. Currently their angular size as seen from the Earth is much smaller than we can resolve with any scope we have. Now, for the sake of argument, if the landers were glowing white-hot from being baked in the Sun all day, [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] we might be able to see the glow as a point source. But we will not be able to actually see them as landers unless we get a scope big enough, or move a scope close enough to come within a few meters resolving power.

So, once again, luminosity allows for detection, but it takes resolution to get any detail.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

I just got an email from Jeff Kuhn about the basketball thing--he says he's not sure how that bit got into the newsletter, he didn't write it!

On the other hand, he thinks that with image reconstruction and extraction algorithms, and high SNR data, one might detect objects that are 1/10 the Rayleigh resolution. He says even that would still be a big basketball.

Any mention of image reconstuction, and the HB's would have a hay day too.

<a name="8 AHAU 14 CHEN .BB"> page 8 AHAU 14 CHEN .BB aka 8 AHAU 14 CHEN .BB
Yeah: up there somewhere?
Anyway, glad this person arived
now lemme thin :: craters ?
i've been compressing my local surroundings
pileling things higher / and rearanging for density
and dont know where to lay my hands on my Moon map just now
Cupernicus {sp} comes to mind ad some others
now near A11 there was Schmid? {maybe}
Yeah .. i'll try to get to CM {here} soon.. this is a test? :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

<a name="20020925.7:43"> page 20020925.7:43 aka Perigee #'s for 10,11,12
On 2002-09-25 23:09, HUb' wrote: To: HUb' <pre>
2452553 2002 , 10 , 5 NEW |
2452554 PERIGEE 356937 KM |closest approach
2452568 2002 , 10 , 20 FULL |of season
2452568 APOGEE 406363 KM |
2452583 2002 , 11 , 4 NEW |new moon
2452583 PERIGEE 358172 KM |/on perigee
2452595 APOGEE 405794 KM |??? according to me
2452598 2002 , 11 , 19 FULL |the proper distance to the MOON
2452611 PERIGEE 362305 KM |should be expressed in CM................ so add five zerows and your answer MAY be 35.69e9 around 40 billion CM ? over:
2452612 2002 , 12 , 3 NEW | </pre> added pre commands 1st edit
these are the numbers 2 basic programs generate {combined & sorted}

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUb' on 2002-09-26 09:49 ]</font>

All those semicolons push out the right margin, in some browsers. Are they part of the test?

standard [FAST] 486/100 disclaimer {no timestamp / page name} etc
On 2002-09-26 06:44, GrapesOfWrath wrote: To? HUb's 486
All those semicolons push out the right margin, in some browsers. Are they part of the test?
YEP: FIRST SOME DEFINATIONS - MINUS SIGN _ shifted -
= equal + shifted = , comma < shifted comma aka Less than
; semi colon : shifted ; or colon ? Question mark / forward slant
well? in Mathametics it the devide .. anyway back to CM {i forgot it in Ed 1 ..Sorry

Ooops! So sorry.