With a high powered telescope, can the US flag be seen on the moon?

Question

Then I would believe the moon landing video wasn't a fake.

Answer 1

I don't think it was a fake landing or is there a site anywhere around proving that it was?

Answer 2

Although my wife's father performed fuel calculations for the original Apollo landing, I'll spare you that speech. Instead, I will encourage you to watch two programs. The first show is called Conspiracy Moon Landing that it currently showing on the National Geographic Channel and it pretty much obliterates all of the popular conspiracy theories.

I would also encourage you to watch a movie called Capricorn One. Made it 1978, it is a fictional story about a fake mission to Mars. Although it is a science fiction story, it is a good example of how utterly impossible it would be to fake a moon landing for any length of time.

12 men walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972 and we have neither the resources nor the technology to pull off that big of a hoax for so long. Hundreds of thousands of people have worked on the space program. It would be far easier to put someone on the moon than to try and fake it and keep it secret for nearly 40 years.

The landings came at a time when our space program was ultra competitive with the former Soviet Union. Remember how big of a deal it was when Sputnik was put into orbit? They had the technology to monitor our moon shots and transmissions. Don't you think they would have called us out if they had evidence that it was all fake?

Perhaps the most definitive proof of our trip to the moon is what we left behind. For the last 35+ years, scientists have been beaming lasers to the moon and measuring the return times. How are they doing this? The beams are reflected back by equipment left on the moon on at 3 different locations.

Case closed.

Answer 3

Apollo 11 landed in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) near its southern edge.

The Hubble Space Telescope was recently trained on the Moon for the first time. It can theoretically resolve lunar features down to 85 metres (280 feet) across, which means that although it could never directly observe the lunar module's base section (much less the flag) it could possibly see its shadow near lunar sunrise or sunset.

No Earth-bound telescope could match this feat.

The flag cannot be seen from earth.

However, the Apollo missions left behind several mirrors on the Moon that are used in laser ranging experiments. This is the most conclusive evidence that humans landed on the Moon.

Answer 4

No earth based telescope is even close to being able to resolve the landers on the moon. Even the Hubble (which is in low earth orbit) can't do so. Think of it like this. If a satelite can resolve a license plate from 100 miles up, it can only resolve something 2000 times bigger than a license plate from 238,000 miles away. The landers are smaller than that.

Let's also face it. You wouldn't believe a Hubble shot any more than you believe the videos of the men on the moon or the films of the return capsules coming up from the moon. Even if we actually do go back, you will still probably think it was faked. Unless you go there yourself, you won't believe it, and probably not even then.

Answer 5

nicely, the Moon is 4 hundred 000 km away. The flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted there became a pair of million metre by ability of 50 cm. So it would be like staring at something a million km. away that became a million/4 hundred mm long; a splash smaller than a purple blood corpuscle. it became a vertical flag, not flat-on on your line of sight, which might make it harder to work out. No siree, you won't be in a position to work out it with any latest telescope. yet once you doubt that that is there, there is tonnes of alternative information. and whether you should work out it, the conspiracy theorists might say that it have been planted by ability of a robotic challenge. The Russians have already extra back a pattern of lunar rock with a robotic probe.

Answer 6

No, there is no telescope powerful enough to resolve an object only inches across from nearly a quarter of a million miles away.

And I doubt that a photo from a telescope that could resolve something we left behind would convince you -- you and all the other skeptics would declare those photos faked, too.

Answer 7

It would have to be very, very powerful indeed. I don't think the Hubble telescope would manage that. Just think of the size of the flag, and the vast distance to it.

You'd probably need high-resolution orbiter scans to detect the lunar lander itself. Google maps are composited from satellite images orbiting earth and you can make out objects the size of cars (about the size of the lander) there. But the orbiters around the moon aren't looking for small rocks and such, they're looking for chemicals and geological shapes. So they're not as detailed.

Answer 8

I have the exact same question... My telescope doesn't bring the moon close enough for me to see it, but I can see the craters on the moon with it.

I added a link which tells why we can't see it in photographs, but maybe with a super telescope at an observatory or something, maybe you'd have better luck.

Answer 9

I'm lead to believe that no currently existing telescope could resolve the flag on the moon.

a quick calculation suggests a telescope with a 1m lens could resolve it, but the interference from the earths atmosphere means u';d need about 100 times that

Answer 10

The very best telescopes can only resolve feature 1.5 miles wide and larger.