Or even any activity on the surface from the lunar rover wheel tracks.?
2007-10-29 09:44:19 · 18 answers · asked by jimbo 555 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Do you have any idea how big the moon is? Or do you just think you could reach out and touch it of you find a tall enough tree?
The diameter of the moon is the same as the distance across the mainland US. Try seeing tyre tracks now.
2007-10-29 11:47:47 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because there is an intimate and inviolate physical relationship between the size of the telescope objective and the resolution it can obtain. Hubble is 2.4 metres wide. It has an angular resolution limit, therefore, that translates to something the size of a football field at lunar distance. The Apollo hardware left behind is simply too small to see. It's the same reason you can see the clock tower on a church ten miles away using binoculars, but not the ant crawling across the clock face of the church just across the road.
2007-10-29 18:38:00 · answer #2 · answered by Jason T 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
When we look through Hubble at the full moon, it appears to have a diameter of only 1800 arc seconds. That's the whole moon. The actual moon is 3,463 kilometers (2,152 miles) across. So, an arc second of the Moon's actual diameter is 3463 km / 1800 arcsec or 1.92 kilometers of actual Moon distance. Hence, Hubble's keenest look is 27 meters (30 yards) of actual Moon distance or about a third the size of a football field. The three-meter lunar rover wouldn't show up even as a speck. Nor would any other abandoned equipment
2007-10-29 16:48:36 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 7⤊ 1⤋
While the Hubble Space Telescope has a good resolution image size, it is only for far away stars, planets etc. the resolution if the telescope were pointed towards the moon would be fuzzy and grainy.
2007-10-29 17:41:30 · answer #4 · answered by mcdonaldcj 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I'll go out on a limb and say:
1) The Hubble space telescope doesn't have a variable focal length - it is designed for imaging objects which are (for all intents and purposes) at infinity.
2) The Hubble space telescope is designed for imaging very dim objects. Pointing it at the Moon would probably just return a white-out. Or, worse, damage the telescope.
2007-10-29 16:51:24 · answer #5 · answered by BNP 4 · 2⤊ 3⤋
It doesn't have the magification. The Hubble is less than 1000X. You'd need 500,000X to see the junk we left on the moon.
2007-10-29 18:12:09 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The resolving power of the Hubble on the lunar surface is little better than 100yards/pixel. They took a picture of the Apollo 17 landing site and here is what it looks like:
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire_collection/pr2005029h/
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire_collection/pr2005029m/
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/hubble_moon.html
Can you see "it"?
:-)
2007-10-29 17:13:10 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Too close and too much light. Try to use a 50x telescope to read a newspaper across the room. You can't. It is not made to look at anything that close. The Hubble was not made to look at things as close as the moon. Also the reflected light would fry the instruments as they weren't made to process that much light.
2007-10-29 16:55:48 · answer #8 · answered by Michael B 5 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Lens on Hubble where set up for deep space exploration and so it can’t focus on nearby objects. You can’t expect lens geared up to let us view stars many light-years away to be capable of focusing on close objects like are Moon. And at close distance the resolution of this telescope wouldn’t allow it to capture detailed images.
2007-10-29 16:59:07 · answer #9 · answered by CrHasher 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Look through a pair of binoculars at something a few feet away. You cant focus it and its the same thing.
Hubble was designed to focus on objects millions and billions of lightyears away, the moons just too close.
2007-10-29 18:37:41 · answer #10 · answered by futuretopgun101 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋