Can You See the Flag on the Moon With a Telescope

Is the flag that the astronauts left notwithstanding on the moon? If so can it be seen past using a telescope? What about the lunar rover? Can we utilize the Hubble Space Telescope to meet anything left behind by the astronauts?

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 Printing Kit for the Apollo 16 mission. The flag is 125 cm (iv anxiety) long, and you would need an optical wavelength telescope around 200 meters (~650 anxiety) in diameter to see information technology. The largest optical wavelength telescope that we have at present is the Keck Telescope in Hawaii which is 10 meters in diameter. The Hubble Space Telescope is only two.four meters in diameter - much besides small!

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

Fifty-fifty barely resolving the lunar lander base of operations, which is ix.5 meters across (including landing gear), would crave a telescope nearly 25 meters across. And in reality you would want a couple (or a few) resolution elements beyond the object then that it's possible to place it. (Otherwise it'll look like a one pixel detection, not an epitome, and I don't think people would exist convinced by a couple pixels!) In addition, with a footing based telescope, y'all have to deal with distortion past the atmosphere also, so you'll probably want something considerably larger than 25 meters if you lot want a adept, conceivable, prototype of the lander. We don't have annihilation that large built all the same! 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, hither's the procedure. Let'due south have the case of Hubble and detect out what the smallest thing it tin can come across 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 bore is 2.four meters (it'due south non very big - information technology had to fit into the Shuttle.) Also, nosotros know that visible wavelength light is in the range 400-700 nanometers. I'll use 600 nm, because information technology's somewhere in the heart and I've used it earlier for this calculation.
3. If yous use all units of meters and do R= (600e^-nine)/(two.iv) = 2.5e^-seven. Well, that gives united states of america the resolution of Hubble in radians which isn't also intuitive, simply 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, ready a triangle between Earth and the Moon, where R is the bending in radians that we calculated, 10 is the side opposite angle R which corrosponds to the object on the moon, and the adjacent side is the Earth-Moon distance. Then y'all accept Tangent(R)=10/(distance Moon). The distance to the moon is 384,400 km. So converting to meters once again and plugging in R and d_moon will give yous a size in meters of the smallest size thing HST can see.
5. When y'all do this you get 96.1 meters (315 feet). The astronauts didn't get out annihilation this large! If you look at this HST image of the Moon you tin encounter that they say "Hubble tin can resolve features as small as 280 feet beyond." I think they used 500 nm as their wavelength instead of 600 nm, but it'south the same social club of magnitude every bit what nosotros got here. So there's no style HST can see anything humans left behind. HST tin do a good chore of studying big-calibration geology, like craters, which is what the images were of. People and their stuff are just really small on a planetary scale!

Update from Ann: Information technology'due south notwithstanding the case that the relatively pocket-sized telescopes we have on Earth, and orbiting Earth, tin't see these tiny features on the Moon. Just in 2009 NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) probe to orbit the Moon, written report the mural in detail, and characterize the environment (generally focused on checking for radiation, with which future astronauts would have to contend).

In improver to conveying out this scientific mission, LRO was able to take images of the Apollo landing sites (for the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 missions) and could identify the flags and other equipment. Read more about that here or here, and check out NASA's multimedia epitome archive from LRO including this stunning prototype of the Apollo eleven site.

Page last updated on June 25, 2015, by Ann Martin.

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Source: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/45-our-solar-system/the-moon/the-moon-landings/122-are-there-telescopes-that-can-see-the-flag-and-lunar-rover-on-the-moon-beginner#:~:text=Yes%2C%20the%20flag%20is%20still,see%20it%20using%20a%20telescope.&text=The%20Hubble%20Space%20Telescope%20is,telescope%2075%20meters%20in%20diameter.

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