If the moon landing was real, then why can't we see the things we left there?

Question

All of the footage I've seen of the moon landing was on the sunny side of the moon, and the earth was in plain view. This means that we should be able to see where we 'landed' from here on earth.

Why then with high power telescopes, and observatories can we not see even an arguable image of the moon rover, or other large objects which we supposedly left there? The hubble can pull in images from deep space, but cannot zoom in on the moon? Why not?

A simple home telescope pulls in pretty good images of the moon. I can imagine that an observatory would be something like a thousand times better than this. I realize how small these things we left there would be in contrast to the size of the moon, but it's still no excuse. They should be visable.

It seems to me that if this wasn't a conspiracy, we could see something we left there. Thoughts?

Answer 1

Why would the Hubble be used to check out moon landing sites that we already know pretty well?  It was designed to explore deep space.

The moon rover is about the size of a golf cart.  It is not going to stand out against a lunar landscape unless we are seriously looking for it, and--if we know where it is--why look for it?

Answer 2

Why would the people who control large observatories and the hubble telescope waste their time looking at the moon? Those facilities are in great demand by astronomers looking to investigate real problems in science; nobody is going to waste time and money to allay the concerns of conspiracy theorists.

There is one thing left on the moon that we can and do regularly observe, though. When they went to the moon, astronauts left a laser reflector at one of the sites; lasers are beamed from the earth to the moon, and back, in order to measure the exact distance between the earth and the moon.

You can read about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser...

Answer 3

Also, if you've ever looked at a full moon in even a small home telescope, you'd see that it's very bright. So bright it can even make you sore if you stare too long at it. The electronics in Hubble are designed for very faint objects. It has a shield that is closed when there's any danger of the optics being exposed to the sun or even the Earth (which is also very bright on the sunlit side). Using Hubble to view the moon whenever it would be light enough to see the landing sites would just fry the optics. And what would that prove?

Besides, if you had done a 15-second Google search, you would have found this site:

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/Apoll...

This gives you a good idea of the scale. Even tho the moon is smaller than the Earth, it's still a sizable chunk of real estate.

Answer 4

Has Russia ever tried to land on the moon?

Answer 5

we could if we really want to built something to look at the stuff on the moon.  With telecopes, you get either width or resolution.  The telecsopes we built are for width because we want to look at wide swath of the sky at once.  If we built a telescope that has that fine of a resolution to be able to see the stuff on the moon it is pretty much useless for anything else.

Answer 6

Oh no. That is a common thought, but also an equally common misconception. The most POWERFUL telescope on earth can only get the resolution of about a football field. This means that for every pixel you see in the most powerful photograph of the moon, that pixel is equivalent to one football field sized space on the moon. So if the Apollo space craft made a crater the size of a football field, we still wouldn’t be able to see it.

The moon is about 250,000 miles away from earth. Yes you can easily see earth, but could you see a house from the moon? Because all the Apollo landings put together made a crater about the size of a large house.

And objects we get from deep-space are HUGE. Galaxies aren’t small. They are unimaginably huge. Its because they are so big that we can see them. But really, even the largest photo of the Andromeda Galaxy, has an extremely wide scale when it comes to the actual size.

Conspiracy theories having to do with the moon are always, 100% of the time, wrong. Any conspiracy theory you can through at me can easily be debunked with science.

People view the moon as being small, and close to earth, when it is actually very far away, and very large. Observatories on earth will never be powerful enough to see the flag on the moon, or the landing crafts on the moon. It is impossible.

Answer 7

Which means that the moon landing is fake!!! maybe they just wanted to show off to russia.

Answer 8

There are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, high powered and expensive telescopes are designed to look at other stars and distant galaxies. This means that the focal range of such scopes is not designed for looking at objects so close to the earth. This in turn means that cheap telescopes are often equivilent and even better for studying the moon.

The other major factor in play is the atmospheric distortions. When looking from telescopes on earth the main limiting factor are these distortions; which appear similar to the ripples of a mirage. The breakthrough with Hubble in the 1990s was that viewing distant objects from space [while also utilising infrared] bypassed these distortions allowing for images vastly superior to any earth observatory.

However, modern technology allows for some neat ways to minimize the atmospheric distortions. Using multiple scopes at different locations [simutaniously focusing on the same subject] allows for computers to calculate [via cancellation] the distortions present. Some of these ultra expensive telescopes even have mirrors that are fed this information and warp in realtime to counteract and to some extent cancel the distortions. Therefore they can now collect images from the earth which rival that of Hubble. Again, the problem here is that they are designed for much vaster distances than the moon. Its a bit like a longsighted person trying to read without glasses.

As for the conspiracy theories.. we know that its not to hard to get people and large objects to space.. satellites are often visible to the naked eye. The moonlander used in the Apollo missions is certainly capable of landing and taking off from ther moon. Escape velocity [the speed/power needed to reach orbit from the surface] of the moon is much less than that of the earth due to the low gravity and lack of atmosphere. Therefore, technically speaking there is nothing unusual or improbable about the moon landings. Also, many samples have been brought back which are known to display different characteristics to earth rock..

Ive always thought that Apollo 13 was the conspiracy. Sending naive astronauts up and 'creating' a hero story [with McGuyver style subplot] wouldve been just what the Russians didnt want to hear.. more often than not when something went wrong, they lost their cosmonauts. A moral boost for the good old US equalled a knock for the USSR.

Answer 9

if you were on the moon can you see cars on the earth? i know the moon looks like u would be able to see everything on it but it is very big compared to a car or a shoeprint or even a flag. Light shining a flash light in the sun. We went to the moon, now its off to mars

OBAMA 08

Answer 10

Gosh there are amazingly intelligent superhuman life forms beyond the real s of RS and Philosophy, My Lord !

Do you feel we are all in search of the one singular truth with differing paths and avenues towards that goal and end ..?

Answer 11

because although the telescopes are of very high power, they are still not sharp enough to spot the 8 foot rover, or the 2 foot flag. or the 8 inch foot print. you have to be close to spot very small objects.

Answer 12

LandingS, not landing. Six of them. No telescope has sufficient resolving power to see objects so small at the distance of the moon. Telescopes are good for looking at big things far away, not small things close up. The landings were real; don't be an idiot. We have plenty of those already.

Answer 13

When Hubble looks at things in deep space it still only has the same angular resolution - but the things it looks at are a lot bigger than the moon.

Hubble can achieve ~0.1arcsec resolution.

At a distance of ~400000km, this means the smallest thing it could resolve on the moon is ~200 meters - that's a lot bigger than anything we left on the moon

Answer 14

I actually did the math once.  You'd need about a million power telescope.  Even the Hubble is less than 1000 power.  Besides that, it would have to be large diameter (about 1000 feet, which is 10 times as big as we have now).  Like other people said, if I had a million power telescope I'm not sure pointing it at the moon would be a high priority for me.