If I shine a laser pointer at the moon would it dazzle an astronaut on the surface?

Question

A handheld laser pointer. I know they come in a range of colours and powers. What would the astronaut see if they looked at Earth at the time the light reached the moon?

Answer 1

Even a laser would dissipate a great deal over 239,000 miles.

  It would have to be very powerful to be seen over such a distance,and it would be difficult to aim.

The astronauts left a retro mirror on the moon and tried to get a laser reflection from it.

  They achieved this but it was a very powerful laser and they had to fire it thousands of time to make contact and get a return.

  So it can be done.

Answer 2

Yes u can,

u just hav got to hold a powerful magnyfying lens over it.

then u hav to pour some water and in the water pour som potassium zincate. To the product add some carbon disulphide.

this will increase the magnification power to 100,000 X

And the laser pointer will be clearly distinguished above all other lights on earth.

Answer 3

I did that ; NASA had a 1 GHz laser that did ranging on the moon . The first mission left some special mirrors there . It was calculated that this special laser would cover no more than 5 mile radius. This was powerful enough to put out the eyes of a pilot at 50 Miles .

Answer 4

The light from a laser spreads slightly and at that distance it will have spread so much that it would not be visible.

Answer 5

That would have to be one h**l of a laser pointer. Not exactly something you mail in for.

Answer 6

No, it would not be visible on the Moon.  There is a science experiment where powerful lasers on Earth are aimed at the retro-reflector mirrors on the Moon, and we get only a few photons back  each second.

A 15 watt laser spreads out to about 7 km by the time the beam gets to the moon (your laser pointer spreads out a lot more than that).  The power of the beam on the Moon is only 0.15 microWatts!

Answer 7

Since most astronauts are also pilots, you would be shining a laser in the eyes of a pilot.  A crime.

Answer 8

Definitely not.

Unless you had a superbright laser pointer, no.

It has to do with the inverse square law.

Intensity of a light source is equal to 1/distance squared.

So the further away the target is, the less bright the pojnter will be.

Answer 9

the light would not reach the moon. the light would dissapate over the course of 250,000 miles to the moon, and the atmosphere would scramble the light as well. but theoretically, if there was no atmosphere in the way, and everything was a complete vacuum, then it would take 1.3 seconds for the light to reach the moon. but that isn't going to happen with any laser pointer out on the market.