carl

It would burn the f**k out of the telescope. It's not designed to look at stuff that bright.

They *have* been pointing telescopes at the moon since the 1970s. The Apollo astronauts left a science package (ALSEP) which included a laser reflector. There's an observatory (McDonald) that's been bouncing lasers off it ever since. The reflector bounces the laser straight back to its origin (*unlike* the moon's surface, which would scatter it) and they use the data to do lunar distance measurements, etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/399468.stm

http://www.csr.utexas.edu/mlrs/

As they're publicly-funded, I'm pretty sure if you e-mail McDonald they will share some of their lunar laser ranging data with you. Why don't you go and look at the evidence?

stilover

Yes, they've landed a probe on the Moon. So what? They've landed one on Mars too. Man has not been to Mars either, so what does a Probe on the Moon confirm? Man has put a probe on the Moon.

carl

But electronics are more sensitive to radiation than people. If they can put a probe on the moon, why can they not put a man on the moon?

They can't put a man on Mars because it takes too long to get there (several years). The moon is only a few days away.

BTW the reason they can't use Hubble is that the stuff they want to see is below the diffraction limit -- essentially, Hubble can't resolve features that small. See http://sm3a.gsfc.nasa.gov/messages/676.html
Or do you want to argue about fundamental physical principles like the diffraction limit? Maybe people like Lord Rayleigh and George Airy came up with this stuff in the 19th century just so NASA could perpetrate the moon hoax.

I particularly like the incident when some nobber of an author, whose achievements in life amount to f**k all, challenged Buzz Aldrin that he hadn't been to the moon (an achievement which requires a lot more ***** than most of us has). So Aldrin punched him. Good on him, I think he was 79 at the time...

stilover

The Moon isn't bright.

Plus, how come Hubble has taken pictures of the Sun? Surely that is brighter than your Glowing moon?
They do have filters on it you know.

carl

They're solar filters, you'd see nothing of the moon using them. There isn't just one poxy camera on the HST you know -- there's a primary mirror and about half a dozen imagers tuned to different wavelengths. There just isn't a lunar imaging camera. Sorry.

BTW, what research have you bothered to do? And I don't mean Wikipedia or Google. Have you bothered to learn physics? Astronomy? Astrophysics? Spacecraft Systems Engineering? Orbital dynamics? I've learnt all this stuff, so why should I bother explaining it to some ignorant person like you who can't be bothered to learn before challenging?

Edit: why don't you go look up the specs of the instrument packages on HST, work out the angular resolution, field of view and spectral range of each one, then determine if it would be any use for imaging the moon?

TopBanana

It is when the sun is reflected off it... damn sight brighter than you at any rate!

stilover

But the Moon isn't bright though is it?

TonyG

Er, Hubble hasn't taken pictures of the Sun. It has to keep the aperture something like (IIRC) a minimum of 20 degrees away fro the Sun in order to avoid burning out the very expensive (and very difficult to replace) detectors.

TonyG

Look at the Moon through a decent telescope when it's full. Believe me, it's bright.

TopBanana

Magnitude -12.6

That is very very bright.

stilover

With the reflection off the sun, then yes it is. The poster stated the Moon was bright. Fact of the matter is, the Moon itself is not.

Just being picky.

carl

This is the best that Hubble can do:

I guess left and bottom right are HST images, top right must be from the LM on the surface. You can see that the mountains are the same in the top right and bottom right.

As the page at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/...bble_moon.html says, "The Apollo descent stages left on the lunar surface are too small to be seen by Hubble, which can see objects as small as 60-75 yards, about three-quarters the length of a soccer field. The left-behind descent stages are only about the size of a small truck.

These observations weren't easy. The moon is a difficult target for Hubble because it moves across the sky faster than Hubble can track it and is very dim in ultraviolet light. The observations required steady, precise, as well as long exposures to search for the resources. In spite of these challenges, Hubble was able to image all of its targets, and early results show that Hubble can detect ilmenite at the Apollo 17 site from 248,000 miles (400,000 km) away."

It's bloody hard to take an ordinary photo of the moon, it moves so fast. An exposure of 1/15s or slower will result in a blurry moon, unless you're tracking it. So hats off to the guys that did this, although stilover will probably complain they faked it. If they faked the lunar surface pictures in 1972 (and it is 1972, because it's the Apollo 17 landing site in Fra Mauro), they'll have to have faked the HST pictures to "fit in" with them, won't they?

carl

Jeez, do you think I don't know that the moon doesn't glow through its own internal nuclear reactions? I guess I just can't compete with you in terms of lunar knowledge.

The earth is even brighter than the moon (in terms of reflected light) as it has a higher reflectivity (albedo). Actually the moon's is pretty low.

TelBoy

Fake


Hello Carl

carl

LOL! I've found the source of stilover's images, and it's not the HST at all. Look at the location of the prominence in this image, it's the same:



Then look at the URL -- it's the Voyager website, so it's been taken by one of the Voyager probes (probably at around the same time we were landing men on the moon...)

stilover

It's not the Voyager website, smart @rse

carl

What, voyager.jpl.nasa.gov -- "Welcome to the Voyager web site"?

How difficult is it? You have a picture of the sun, with a solar prominence in the bottom left. I find a picture of the sun, with a solar prominence in the bottom left, that looks identical on JPL's Voyager website. We both have different conclusions:

Mine: your picture was taken by Voyager and is the same picture as the one on the Voyager website
Yours: your picture was taken by HST at the same time as the Voyager picture, 20 years before HST was built. It must be at the same time, because the surface of the sun looks exactly the same, and the flares and prominences are in the same place. These are transient events.

Apply Occam's Razor to determine the correct one.

stilover

Look Carl

At the end of the day, I just don't believe that Man has been to the Moon and back. The evidence I've seen make be believe that.
Some people believe we have been to the Moon, and the evidence they see, makes them believe that.

It just seems to me, and others, that technology was just to pre-historic to enable a manned flight. When you take into consideration the amount of radiation these guys would have been exposed too, both the Van Allen belt, and the radiation from the sun in deep space. Then you look at the guy's who've apparently been there, and there is just nothing wrong with any of them. Why haven't they got Cancer? Surely a thin steel hull and a thin space suit would not protect you from so much Radiation.
Why are NASA looking into how much Radiation is on the Moon surface and looking into developing space suits than can withstand these level of Radiation if everything was OK with the Suits they had back then?
Why would it take soo long for them to design a space craft to get to the Moon when they already have a proven design?
Why did Vaun Brown (Spell check) state in his book that to enable Man to reach the Moon they would need a Space craft soo much larger than the one that apparently went there. And he should know.

Now, this argument could/will run for many years to come no doubt. If people believe things they need evidence to make them change their minds. To me and others that evidence hasn't been produced. There are just so many factors that don't add up.
Yes the Government will always shout Conspiricy Theory, whether they've actually been there or not.
Nothing you will say on here, likewise nothing I'll say on here will make us change our minds.

It just annoys me sometimes when people just believe because the Governments say that what happend. As we all know, Governments don't always tell the truth.

stilover

It wasn't the Voyager website

TelBoy

stilover, i do still agree with you, mostly.

BUT

The one thing you're therefore calling into question is the integrity of every single astronaut involved in the Apollo programme.

Whatever they might have been threatened with at the time, i simply can't believe they're all still prepared to tow the party line - ONE of them would have needed the multi millions that blowing the lid on the scam would have procured. Until and unless i hear that any of the remaining astronauts have admitted it was all a hoax, i have to, despite all the evidence, conclude that they did really go there. And i'm as sceptical as they come.

carl

But you haven't bothered to learn properly before coming to that conclusion. I don't believe that man went to the moon because the US govt. told me. I can't believe they have infiltrated and affected the course content at both Kent University and Queen Mary College, University of London, just to support their hoax.

DCI Gene Hunt

Dentist leave the room during x-ray's because of the potential 'long-term' exposure effects of radiation to them, as in exposing themselves to radiation doses EVERY day for life would be quite bad.........

Space flights aren't the same and this thread is all bollocks.....

TonyG

The new suits are being designed because the astronauts will be out on the surface for much longer than the Apollo astronauts were. They also need to be far modre flexible, as the original ones were a bit restrictive.
As for a totally new ship, like I said before, it's not just being designed for a moonshot, it's a multi-role transport/ deep space exploration vehicle.

You might as well ask why we now have Subarus, when the Ford Model T was a proven design...

LG John

How inconsiderate! That's like speccing a BMW without leather upholstry - just plain short-sighted

I really don't know what to believe. I've met Charles Duke and he gave no indication that he'd done anything other than walk on the moon. But I also believe that very little in this world is as it seems but I'm too insignificant a cog in the wheel to make any difference or to prove it.

LG John

Deep space?? So it'll have warp drive then on the basis it would probably take a lifetime (guess, haven't checked the distances (carl help me)) to leave our solar system. Deep space means fooking off to other stars and beyond (star trek stuff) and unless we've cracked travelling well beyond the speed of light that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

carl

Bizarrely I do actually have a BMW without leather upholstery...
But I didn't design the HST, because I was only a toddler when they were deisgning it in the 1970s

TonyG

Okay, scratch "deep space" and replace with "planetary exploration (Moon/Mars)"

carl

I used to think that, but NASA's definition of "Deep Space" isn't necessarily interstellar, i.e. outside the heliosphere (the bubble of space where the solar wind dominates). For example, NASA's "Deep Space 1" probe visited the comet Borrely and the asteroid Braille, both well inside the solar system.

carl

Which looks surprisingly like the Apollo/Saturn V stack. If I was designing it, I'd make it look like a Tintin rocket.

LG John

...so if we do achieve the goal of travelling further we'll have to come up with a new word for 'deep'. Joy!