Picture of flag on the moon

When are we going to have the capability to take remote pictures of the flag and landers on the moon? It would be a great picture to have and would disprove all people who believe the moon landing was a hoax.

The flag is on the far side of the moon. The moon spins around the earth in such a way that the back side never faces earth. So the flag, if it is there, will never be visible from earth.

How powerful of a telescope is needed to view the lander on the moon? Will it be too bright (I doubt it)? Can I buy one at the local telescope shop? Why have the Cassandra/Cassini? can't remember the name, satelite photos not really all been shared?

I've read that Japan is launching a satelite next year to orbit the moon at take pics. That should be interesting...

Originally posted by Seapeople
The flag is on the far side of the moon. The moon spins around the earth in such a way that the back side never faces earth. So the flag, if it is there, will never be visible from earth.

I thought the moon did not spin. And the same "side" of the moon always faced the sun. That is why there is a "dark side" of the moon. Damn, now I have to dig up some articles to see if I am crazy.

Na, your not crazy, you just misunderstood. The moon spins the same way the earth does, at just the right speed that the far side never faces the earth. Look at the moon for a couple nights straight when its full, and you will see the same features. Now that just means we will never get a picture from earth of our flag. But if Japan or china goes up there they may land on the near side. Plus they would have to orbit the moon first as well. So you could catch that I think.

Originally posted by Seapeople
The flag is on the far side of the moon. The moon spins around the earth in such a way that the back side never faces earth. So the flag, if it is there, will never be visible from earth.

You are wrong. The flag is not on the dark side of the moon. We never set foot on the dark side.
nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...
Apollo 11 was when Buzz Aldrin planted "the flag".

www.hq.nasa.gov...

I was wrong, imagine that. I am not sure I know where I heard that. It doesnt matter though. I was told that is why I cant see the flag. I found out it is because we cant build a telescope big enough. My apologies.

No problem. Just trying to provide some info. I heard that it was far too cold on the dar side of the moon. The astronauts would freeze if they stayed for any extended period of time.
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Has anyone ever looked into the phases of the moon during any of the Lunar missions? Seems to me that would kind of prove what kind of lighting conditions would have been present. If it was during a full moon, the shadows would be minimal if at all present. Am I right?

there is no "dark" side of the moon, just a far side. but yeah the apollo capsules did land on the side that faces us.

and yeah we'd need to put some high powered satillites in orbit to see anything really and even then it wouldn't be that clear.

"There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark." - Pink Floyd

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Wouldnt really matter, they can take pictures of the moon and edit in a flag.

From cornell.edu website...

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!

Resolving the larger lunar rover (which has a length of 3.1 meters) would still require a telescope 75 meters in diameter.

Even barely resolving the lunar lander base, which is 9.5 meters across (including landing gear), would require a telescope about 25 meters across. And in reality you would want a couple (or a few) resolution elements across the object so that it's possible to identify it. (Otherwise it'll look like a one pixel detection, not an image, and I don't think people would be convinced by a couple pixels!) In addition, with a ground based telescope, you have to deal with distortion by the atmosphere as well, so you'll probably want something considerably larger than 25 meters if you want a good, believable, image of the lander. We don't have anything that big built yet! So there's really no way to image equipment left behind by the astronauts with current telescope technology.

More details for the mathematically inclined: How did I calculate this stuff? Well, here's the procedure. Let's take the case of Hubble and find out what the smallest thing it can see on the surface of the Moon is.

1. Resolution (in radians) = (wavelength)/(telescope diameter) or R= w/D. This is a formula from optics.

2. So for Hubble we know that the telescope diameter is 2.4 meters (it's not very big - it had to fit into the Shuttle.) Also, we know that visible wavelength light is in the range 400-700 nanometers. I'll use 600 nm, because it's somewhere in the middle and I've used it before for this calculation.

3. If you use all units of meters and do R= (600e-9)/(2.4) = 2.5e-7. Well, that gives us the resolution of Hubble in radians which isn't too intuitive, but we can convert to meters on the surface of the Moon.

4. To find the spatial extent that 2.5e-7 radians is at the distance of the moon, set up a triangle between Earth and the Moon, where R is the angle in radians that we calculated, x is the side opposite angle R which corrosponds to the object on the moon, and the adjacent side is the Earth-Moon distance. Then you have Tangent(R)=x/(distance Moon). The distance to the moon is 384,400 km. So converting to meters again and plugging in R and d_moon will give you a size in meters of the smallest size thing HST can see.



5. When you do this you get 96.1 meters (315 feet). The astronauts didn't leave anything this big! If you look at this HST image of the Moon you can see that they say "Hubble can resolve features as small as 280 feet across." I think they used 500 nm as their wavelength instead of 600 nm, but it's the same order of magnitude as what we got here. So there's no way HST can see anything humans left behind. HST can do a good job of studying large-scale geology, like craters, which is what the images were of. People and their stuff are just really small on a planetary scale!

Originally posted by darklanser
No problem. Just trying to provide some info. I heard that it was far too cold on the dar side of the moon. The astronauts would freeze if they stayed for any extended period of time.
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Has anyone ever looked into the phases of the moon during any of the Lunar missions? Seems to me that would kind of prove what kind of lighting conditions would have been present. If it was during a full moon, the shadows would be minimal if at all present. Am I right?

My astronomical knowledge is limited, but it seems any crater or other rock features could cause shadows depending on where they landed.

Originally posted by adcadcadc

When are we going to have the capability to take remote pictures of the flag and landers on the moon? It would be a great picture to have and would disprove all people who believe the moon landing was a hoax.

YES, that very thought drifted thru my mind a few days ago as well!!!! Why hasn't anyone taken any Photo's of the Flag on the Moon??! Maybe its true, maybe the entire thing was staged at Disney Studio's. I wouldn't be surprised if it had, Hollywood is very good at it. The Gov'ts own personal puppet. Why did they stage it if in fact it was staged? Because big boys with the most toys want their power fame glory greed and control. If it was staged it was quite brilliant for it's time, however, people are becoming awakened and knowlege is increasing so hiding this won't be easy for them for much longer.

>>Why hasn't anyone taken any Photo's of the Flag on the Moon??!

*points at previous explanation of why*

Originally posted by Seapeople
I was wrong, imagine that. I am not sure I know where I heard that. It doesnt matter though. I was told that is why I cant see the flag. I found out it is because we cant build a telescope big enough. My apologies.

'we can't' build a telescope big enough??
Bleh i say Bleh!!
They can build anything, i mean seriously, Americans do it bigger better faster stronger and they don't give in until they 'Do It' so i don't buy that statement one bit

huggles to all my American friends '

But why spend many many millions (billions?) of dollars to build a large earthbound telescope just to prove they went to the moon. When they already know they did?

Originally posted by Kano
But why spend many many millions (billions?) of dollars to build a large earthbound telescope just to prove they went to the moon. When they already know they did?

Exactly. Unless corporations want to sponser the building of a telescope that big, it's not going to happen. There's also the problem of looking through the earth's atmosphere, which distorts and blurs images. That's why they built the Hubble in the first place.

Originally posted by Kano
But why spend many many millions (billions?) of dollars to build a large earthbound telescope just to prove they went to the moon. When they already know they did?

Beacause ... Inquirey minds want to know