To the moon, Alice!

[RStar]

Originally Posted by Alex

From Earth? Because those things are small and we're far away.

How small? The biggest things left behind by the Apollo missions were abour 20 feet wide. When we point Hubble at the moon it has a resolution of about 100 feet per pixel.

Europe's SMART-1 satellite took pictures from orbit around the moon and I think it never had a resolution better than 50ft per pixel or so.

Keep in mind that all those really high resolution photographs in Google Earth are taken from airplanes only a half dozen miles away at most.

That's what I thought, but I was thinking that if Hubble can take pictures of things light years away, why not a twenty foot size item on the moon? But what I forgot is that the things Hubble is taking pictures of light years away are huge galaxys; and they are emitting their own light.

Originally Posted by Moonliner

You mean like this?

Cool! Thanks! But the problem with those pictures are 1) that they are only spots, and 2) what's the proof that they are the Apollo 15 landing site? It's good enough for me (not that I ever doubted we landed, of course), but the skeptics may not be convenced.