I was gonna prove to my co-worker we did in fact land on the moon, but Looking up how to see the landing sites with a telescope said it is physically impossible (improbable). An explanation went with it but… Yeah… It’s why I’m here.
I know we have a lunar satellite that can show it, but I’m prepaid for inevitable ” computer graphics recording”
Edit. Maybe I’ll just ask for someone to explain “Dawes limit”
In: Physics
Essentially your typical hobby telescope is too small to see anything that humans left behind on the moon. We’ve left behind the Apollo lander base (legs) and the lunar rover as well as a few other objects.
To explain why your usual hobby telescope is too small is that you need three things to take a good image. You need a good level of magnification, a high aperture for sharpness and a large area to reflect the light.
The moon is about 380,000 kilometres from earth and has a visible surface area of about 20 million square kilometres, which is roughly the same as the whole of North America. Now try finding an object about 5 metres or so across somewhere in an area that size. Yes you can look up the coordinates of the object and then get your telescope to find it but that’s not the point.
To make sure you have a telescope to meet those three criteria you can have a large telescope with the correct set of lenses for magnification. The size of the telescope can meet the aperture and the large light collecting area requirements. However, a telescope large enough will need to be metres across to meet those requirements. This will make it very expensive and very difficult to make for the tolerances needed for an accurate image.
However, scientists have found that the can meet those requirements by using multiple smaller telescopes far apart from each other. You can through this principal effectively have a telescope with a light collecting area that is kilometres wide by using spaced out telescopes. Although the issue this now faces is not having a large enough collection area but this can be overcome by increasing the exposure to create the image.
TL;DR the objects are too small and too far away for your hobby telescope to see because they are too small
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