Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

Vanifae

Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:12 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

We went to the moon.

Arcand

Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:16 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

JONATHAN FRAKES'S ALIEN DISSECTION FOOTAGE IS IRREFUTABLE

Isetnefret

Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:21 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

I took this, with my telescope. Click on it to see a larger version. The smallest white spec in the picture is the size of a large mountain.

Russel Croman took this using a telescope twice as large, with a camera that costs 10 times as much as mine.

Same telescope as mine, same camera, different eyepiece. The deepest crater visible is 32km in diameter.

I've seen the moon through professional observatories. They have to cover up 90% of the mirror because otherwise it would burn you eye out with the brightness. Even with my scope, it hurts to look at it through my high quality glass. I actually use cheap Meade eyepieces for the moon, because it's much more comfortable.

The best shots I've seen with large telescopes will resolve that 32km crater so so that you can see it as if you were in a plane flying 30,000 feet above it. Not nearly close enough to see tracks or footprints.

If you get telescopes better than that, they probably can't resolve something as close as the moon.

Arcand

Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:31 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

Yeah, doesn't look like they're there yet. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys can resolve down to 200-ish feet per pixel in its lunar shots and I don't know if anything better than that is in orbit right now (for visible-light, anyway).

fuzzygeek

Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:32 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

Vanifae wrote:We went to the moon.

Vanifae

Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:36 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

He had a dream.

Arnock

Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:20 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

Aubade wrote:
Arcand wrote:Isn't some of the detritus from the Apollo landings visible on the moon's surface, with good enough telescopes?

I would think our best optics could even pick out the bootprints or the rovers' tire tracks.

I found it hilarious becuase i was watching mythbusters last night and it was busting all the myths about the apollo landing, pretty neat shit.

Think I saw mythbusters on CNN or something talking about how it couldn't have been faked.

Invisusira

Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:27 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

http://www.clavius.org/

Fridmarr

Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:40 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

You get up in the grill of a dude from that generation and call him a liar and a coward, you are going to get rocked. It's a simple as that.

Kelaan

Tue Jul 21, 2009 8:07 pm

Re: Buzz Aldrin Punches Critic

Arcand wrote:Isn't some of the detritus from the Apollo landings visible on the moon's surface, with good enough telescopes?
I would think our best optics could even pick out the bootprints or the rovers' tire tracks.

In fact, it isn't, even with the Hubble. The angle subtended by the stuff on the landing site is several orders of magnitude smaller than a pixel from one of the telescopes.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sol ... _moon.html

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/hubble_moon.html wrote:The Apollo descent stages left on the lunar surface are too small to be seen by Hubble, which can see objects as small as 60-75 yards, about three-quarters the length of a soccer field. The left-behind descent stages are only about the size of a small truck.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1363 ... ge3_lg.jpg
You can see that the image that the hubble took is very fuzzy.

Also:
http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... ing-sites/

The moon is 384,400,000 meters away, on average.... The angle that {a 5 meter} relic makes is then θ = tan-1((relic)/(distance)) = 3.726*10-7° = ... 1.34*10-3 (0.00134) arcseconds from Earth.

...
At 500 nm, Hubble has a resolving power of 0.05 arcseconds, and the pixels on Hubble’s detector are actually 0.1 arcsecond across. This corresponds to a spot size about 370 meters across.

The largest optical telescope on Earth – the Keck 10-m telescope, can theoretically resolve an object at the 0.013 arcsecond level, but this still is 1 order of magnitude too large (10x) to resolve any Apollo relic on the moon.

So ... good thing we had the LRO to take some good photos.