Question why arent there any super photos from the moon taken with hubble

Question why aren't there any super photos from the moon taken with hubble, seems strange to me sending probes etc while Hubble can take photos like super quality why as far as i can see aren't there super closeups of the moon......

Possibly because it`s too close to focus on?

I know with my 600mm lense, I can`t take a decent picture of something closer than 4m -it`s designed to focus at a distance.

For the same reason you don't try to read a book with binoculars.

It doesn't seem the Hubble is focused for something that close. [edit: but alas, I am wrong. 2 posts down ]

[edit on 12/6/2007 by DiabolusFireDragon]

Correct me if I am wrong but I have heard this argument before on another thread and I thought that they actually had taken pictures of the moon with Hubble? Granted these pictures I am remembering weren't close up detail but they seemed to be pretty good. Can someone confirm this so I know that I am not going crazy?

Actually, upon further(I actually checked this time) research, the Hubble DID photograph the moon. HERE

Just Google "hubble pictures of the moon" and a bunch of other stuff comes up, too.

reply to post by newworldnews2007

I have often wondered the same thing myself, but there is one on Hubblesite, which shows astronauts and Moon Rover in centre and the 'Anderoid' in crater, lower right plus a 'leg and foot' manufactured item.
Download the high res version and see for yourself, I believe it was posted on here recently, I did wonder if the centrepiece had been'dropped in' but not being an expert I really dont know.
Regards,
Horsegiver.

The hubble ABSOLUTELY can focus on the moon. It is essentially at infinity.

The ONLY REASON the hubble wouldn't be used to take photos of the moon might be that the brightness of the moon would saturate the ccd detectors used to image whatever the telescope is looking at.

The moon is very bright compared to most deep-sky objects. Considering the hubble has a 78" mirror, it would gather up a lot of light at its focus, perhaps too much.

Many people who use their amateur telescopes at home to image the moon find it more comfortable to look through them using a filter to tone down the brightness. Anything over 6" of aperture can be quite a strain on the eyes.


This doesn't mean the hubble can't view the moon; certainly they could have designed in some kind of filter so that the imaging detectors wouldn't be overloaded. I think they just decided against it, because most of the scientific work of telescope study of the moon can be done with ground-based telescopes much more economically.

They have used the Hubble to photograph the moon. The link is two posts up.

The way the Hubble is used normally is to focus on a very small area of space for long periods until the very faint light activates the receptors. Then they move on to the next area and eventually paste all the images together. They can't do that with the Moon because it's so bright it saturates the receptors instantly, so the best they can do is just take a snapshot. We get better images from satellites, that's what they're for.