Moon dust,imprints

Hi.I am killerwhale........,just amblin thro'...I have had this thought in my head for a long time.With the powerful telescopes on earth,why has'nt any one taken photographs, of the imprints,left in the moon dust ,by the last people that were up there?

Hey KW, welcome aboard. You know, your question is a valid one. We can see galaxies millions of light years away but can't see some footprints on the moon. Damn curious.

Anyways, enjoy ATS.

Later.

Welcome aboard!
To (somewhat) answer your question, and respond to intrepid, One of the reasons that there are no pictures from earth or the hubble are twofold:
1) The tearth-bound telescopes do not have the strength and clarity to see the features on the moon well enough to identify the footprints.
2) The orbital telescopes have not been pointed towards the moon for this and even if they were, they again would not be able to get clear enough pictures to identify the footprints. As an example of this.... try using a set of binoculars, now, set them to see the farthest thing away from you, now look at something real close say your hand.

Your hand would be a big blur.
Good question though!

Welcome to ATS.

As for your question…we don’t even have a large enough telescope to see the colorful American flag planted there let alone tracks.

Yes, the flag is still on the moon, but you can't see it using a telescope. I found some statistics on the size of lunar equipment in a Press Kit for the Apollo 16 mission. The flag is 125 cm (4 feet) long, and you would need an optical wavelength telescope around 200 meters (~650 feet) in diameter to see it. The largest optical wavelength telescope that we have now is the Keck Telscope in Hawaii which is 10 meters in diameter. The Hubble Space Telescope is only 2.4 meters in diameter - much too small!

curious.astro.cornell.edu...

Hiya Killer,

Actually, there was a laser reflecter experiment setup on the moon.

Apollo 11 astronauts deployed a reflector array in the Sea of Tranquillity. "Using the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, we have been able to improve, by orders of magnitude, measurements of the Moon's rotation," said Jet Propulsion Laboratory team investigator Dr. Jean Dickey. "We also have strong evidence that the Moon has a liquid core, and laser ranging has allowed us to determine with great accuracy the rate at which the Moon is gradually receding from the Earth."

The first laser ranging retroreflector was positioned on the Moon in 1969 by the Apollo 11 astronauts. By beaming laser pulses at the reflector from Earth, scientists have been able to determine the round-trip travel time that gives the distance between the two bodies at any time to an accuracy of about 3 centimeters. The laser reflector consists of 100 fused silica half-cubes, called corner cubes, mounted in a 46-centimeter square aluminum panel. Each corner cube is 3.8 centimeters in diameter. Corner cubes reflect a beam of light directly back toward the point of origin.

sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Physicists have also used the laser results to check Einstein's theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity. So far, so good: Einstein's equations predict the shape of the moon's orbit as well as laser ranging can measure it. But Einstein, constantly tested, isn't out of the woods yet. Some physicists (Alley is one of them) believe his general theory of relativity is flawed. If there is a flaw, lunar laser ranging might yet find it.

space.about.com...


This equipment had to be placed there by someone since we can still "ping" the moon.

Yeah, you guys keep telling yourselves that.

It's a CONSPIRACY, I tell you.

With the powerful telescopes on earth,why has'nt any one taken photographs, of the imprints,left in the moon dust ,by the last people that were up there?

No telescope on Earth is able to see these footprints or any other artifacts. In fact, the smallest lunar features that may be seen with the largest telescope on Earth are about one-half mile across.

(edit) sorry forgot to say welcome to ATS and enjoy your stay



[edit on 31-5-2005 by Rren]

What you can see with a telescope is not measured by its magnification, but by its resolving power.

The theoretical resolving power of a telescope, measured in arc-seconds, is calculated by dividing the aperture of the telescope (in inches) into 4.56.

Now, you can think of an arc-second as a slice of the sky (a very small slice). If you are looking up at the sky on a clear night with nothing above the horizon, it is 180 degrees from horizon to horizon. Each degree is dividedc into sixty arm-minutes and each arc-minute is divided into sixty arc-seconds. Therefore , an arc-second is is a slice 60 X 60 X180 or 1/648,000 of the size of the sky.

Like I said. it's a pretty small slice.

But you're not interested in arc-seconds, you're intersted in the size of something on the moon (or anywhere else). If you think of an arc-second as that slice of the sky that's covered by your thumbnail at arm's length, how big of an object does that thumbnail cover? It depends on how far away the object is. Actually, your thumbnail is more like 1700 arc-seconds, but the concept is the same)

My thumbnail can cover up my computer mouse at 6 feet, my telephone at eleven feet, and it can cover up the whole moon at 240,000 miles, which is about as far away as the moon is.

There is an equation that lets you convert arc-seconds into distance, but it inbvolves tangents and radians and if you haven't had trig, it wouldn't make any sense. Suffice it to say that on the moon, an arc second covers something a bit more than a mile (6000 ft). So the smallest thing that a telescope which can resolve 1 arc second, would be 6000 feet. If it were smaller than 6000 feet, you couldn't see it, no matter how much magnification you had.

Now my back-yard telescope has an "aperture" or opening of 8 inches, so if everything were perfect and there were no atmospheric pollution and the scope was perfectly still, my scope could resolve (4.56) / (8) or 0.57 arc seconds. This means, that with perfect optics and perfect conditions, I could see something that was 3400 feet in size. Of course, i have $700 optics and I live near the city, and the scope jiggles, so there's no way I could see something even ten miles in diameter with my scope LOL!!

Now the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is much larger, and, being in space, it is viewing under almost perfect conditions. Its resolving power is about 0.05 arc-seconds, which means it couls pick out an object on the Moon 300 feet in size. Unfortunately, the biggest piect we left on the moon is only one-tenth that size, so we can't see the lander with the HST. To see something on the Moon the size of the lander, you'd need a telescope with a resolving power of 0.0048 arc-seconds, which means that its aperture would be 960 inches or 80 feet (24.4 meters)!!

Welcome! Hope to see you posting often. Enjoy.

Thank you for your welcome to ATS.I recieved some excellent answers , most answers thought,were using visible light and it's limitations..have any other wave lenghts been tried......