How come you can't see the american flag on the moon with any telescope?

Answer 1

it's shadow is too small and thin. plus just finding the location itself is extremely hard. you would have to monitor the moon for hours and hours by eye, since satelites aren't programmed for this task. anyway, nasa has better stuff to do.

Answer 2

How come we can't see all the area disturbed by the rovers wheels which should be as large as a number of football fields? That's certainly larger than just a flag. And so are the lower half of the lander and the rover! If it's not viewable from Earth how did they make the selection for each of the supposed landing sites? Lets bounce some more laser lights off the moons surface anyway!

Answer 3

First, those of you who think the Moon landings were a hoax are paranoid idiots. I invite ANY of you to present your "evidence" and join me in a scientific debate and we'll see where we end up.
As for the original question, there is NO telescope currently built that can resolve images as small as the flag or the landers on the Moon. This includes Hubble. Hubble was not designed to view such small objects, it was built for viewing galaxies. For those of you of believe this is NASA just deceiving you, go ahead and look up the specs for Hubble, its mirrors and size. Do some math. It is mathematically impossible for Hubble to see the flag on the Moon.

Answer 4

The flag is very small. Now think of the size of a flag on perkins. How far away can you get when you can't see it.

Now think of the distance to the moon. And the size of the flag.

Even if the flag was much bigger, your telescope could not see it, you can't afford one that could even come close to seening it.

Answer 5

The US flag on the moon subtended an largest angle of 1.5E-7 degrees, or half a milli-arcsecond. Even when it was there, it was too small to see, even with the most powerful telescope.

The flags were made of nylon, held taut with a rod. Nylon degrades when exposed to sunlight. The sunlight on the moon is frequently very strong. The flag was roasted to synthetic ashes a long time ago.

Answer 6

If you've seen the tapings and footings, you'd believe the whole thing. But who ever knew 'that without media', if the whole thing was really true or not?
I think we can't see it, is because, I don't think that flag exists any longer on the moon due to its extinction in outer space. Because of the space particles that may have broken down the weak man-made materials in outer space, causing us to not be able to even probably see the flag out there on the moon anymore.
In general its probably reduced to acidic particles and ashes flying somewhere as debris in outer space.

Answer 7

Smartyslacks is right it is just a big hoax, I've done a lot of research on it but to make it short and still get the mink thinking, the We were 10 years behind the Russians technologically when the lunched Sputnik and miraculously 2 years later after only one shuttle in space we put a man on the moon BEFORE the Russians. Someones not telling the truth.

Answer 8

Satellites orbiting our own planet would have a hard time seeing an American flag sitting out in your front yard. An object that small would be very difficult to see when it is hundreds of thousands of miles away.

Answer 9

Because you're looking thru the Earth's thick, blurry atmosphere.

Could you see a flag in your back yard using satellites around the Earth? Using Google Earth? Probably not.

Don't worry, it's there. Do we have to go back to the moon to prove it to you?

Answer 10

It would take a larger telescope than anything we have, with zero atmospheric interference, to be able to see any of the lunar landing hardware from Earth.