Telescopes and your eyes (Moon)

I am not that new to this forum and have been on the sidelines reading posts after posts of Mars pictures and Moon pictures claiming there are ships, doors, coins, humanoids, and etc. We have tons of savy peeps out there who can build whatever comes to mind. So, with this in mind why doesn't anyone build a strong enough personal telescope to keep tabs on say... the moon?! I mean it doesn't neccessarily have to be strong enough to see the freckles of aliens walking around on the moon. But, it could be enough to watch for suspicious flight activity in and around the moon.

Maybe we should take matters into our own hands. Just a thought.

I think that would still require a large telescope to do so. Although I don't really know what kind of quality you're imagining, but for example, to see the largest Apollo artifacts left on the Moon from Earth, like the decent module. You'd need a telescope with diameter of at least 200m or so, if not more. The largest optical telescopes we have now are ~10m in diameter, just to compare.

well I am going to come off as retarded as hell, but I was wondering if we have any ability, perhaps even with the Hubble, to see anything man made we might have left on the moon....such as the Flag?

I'm not even really suggesting that the personal telescope be powerful enough to see modules landed on the moon but, perhaps, powerful enough to be able to see possible traffic around the moon. To see something either orbitting or entering/exiting the moon. That would be possible wouldn't it? And wouldn't it allow us to speculate more about what is going on with the moon?

Hubble has imaged the moon. It took a whole lot of arguing to get NASA to do it, they first said that the moon was too bright for Hubble to image. Several members of communities like this raised heck, and they imaged it. At least, that's how I recall it.

Here is a good link:
hubblesite.org...

and a good pic:


The top image in the composite is a Hubble shot. The bottom image is from Apollo 17 I believe...

The moon is only about 250,000 miles away.

-WFA

Edited to fix image


[edit on 10-4-2008 by WitnessFromAfar]

Awesome pictures! But I'm not even thinking something as close and detailed as that. Yes, we do have tons of video claiming that lights are UFOs but I'm thinking that the person telescope could be even powerful enough to see lights enter/exiting the moon, flying around the moon, and/or possibly just seeing lights that move like they're being powered intelligently.

The kind of telescope you are talking about (sighting objects in low earth orbit and/or in the atmosphere) costs about $700.00 USD from Meade.

I'll warn you though, it's hard to track fast objects in a telescope manually. Sometimes it's even hard to track a fast moving plane. The more you 'zoom in' on an object, the less perspective you get with what's around the image that you're no longer seeing. If I were you, and I saw lights in the sky, I would get a good pair of binoculars to check it out. Chances are that will help you determine if you're looking at a star, planet, airplane, helicopter, etc. It's enough 'zoom' to see a good sillouette if not features on an object in the atmosphere, but it's also mobile enough to track fast moving objects and cost effective.

They sell binoculars with built in digital cameras now too

You can build your own telescope for about $250.00 USD, but you'd need to build a good mount for it if you want to track fast objects it will need to swivel and pivot.

-WFA

There are like, a ton of people on ATS that think we havent' been to the moon.... would the Hubble pixs but that to rest or what?

Originally posted by jra
I think that would still require a large telescope to do so. Although I don't really know what kind of quality you're imagining, but for example, to see the largest Apollo artifacts left on the Moon from Earth, like the decent module. You'd need a telescope with diameter of at least 200m or so, if not more. The largest optical telescopes we have now are ~10m in diameter, just to compare.

I think 200m or 656 feet aperture would be a bit TOO much. I know I've read in Sky and Telescope Magazine that they are building two telescopes that are at least 150 feet or 45M diameter. I think the cost in about 1.2 million dollars or 130 Million Euros. I think it was in March 2008 issue that had it on the cover. They showed all the mirrors put together and placed it on a football field and it covered half of it (50 Yards) and also from sideline to sideline.

You can read the small article here, but the magazine has more.

I know I watched a show on Nova last month and they talked about the Spy Astronauts America had back in the 1960's. They said the technology they had in that was equal to the Hubble Telescope but instead of facing out, the faced it towards the Earth.

The also said they could see very clearly ANYTHING 3 Inches or 7.2 Centimeters across in High Definition. And that was back in the 1960's. I would like to imagine what they have now.

Excuse my photo editing. But I'm thinking something along the lines of this. Where we have a personal telescope powerful enough to set it up to monitor 1/3 of the moon. Hopefully at that point we could see lights moving around irregularly. I'm not trying to argue with anyone's points, I'm only trying to see if this would be possible. And if it is would it give us a good idea of abnormal activity around the moon?

To Res Ipsa:

Well, it can be proven I suppose in this way. Also, when the Apollo missions were active, they placed a mirror on the moon, on the Earth side. Scientists have bounced lasers off of that mirror to measure the distance of the Earth to the moon by the time it takes the light to travel there and back. So in my view, there isn't much question about us going there. Sufficiently powerful telescopes could image the Apollo landing sites.


To answer the OPs most recent question:
With my Meade ETX 90, with a 2x barlow and my most powerful eyepiece, I can only see about half of the moon at a time. It's a really good zoom, comparable to the image you posted. With my particular telescope (I don't have it set up this way, but it's possible) you can attach a camera or video camera to the back of it using an adapter. The mirror has a switch on it, so you can direct the light either to the eyepiece, or to the camera portal.

It would be possible, but I'm not sure it's feasible to have people watching the moon full time. It would require a worldwide network of people willing to spend time on a slight chance of seeing something strange, and investing about $1000.00 a piece to get themselves set up with the proper equipment to actually record data full time and put it all together and organize it. It would be an enormous undertaking.

It's an interesting idea though

I think a better option (at least for now) might be to sign up for online telescope time

-WFA

[edit on 10-4-2008 by WitnessFromAfar]