35 Is it possible to see the Moon landing sites?
Description
This article is from the Astronomy FAQ, by Joseph Lazio (jlazio@patriot.net) with numerous contributions by others.
35 Is it possible to see the Moon landing sites?
By David W. Knisely <KA0CZC@navix.net>
It is possible to locate and observe the Apollo landing "sites," but
it is *not* possible with current equipment to see the hardware left
there, since their sizes are far too small to be resolved successfully.
For example, a common backyard 6 inch aperture telescope can only
resolve craters on the moon which are about 1.5 miles or so across.
Even telescopes with a resolution comparable to that of the Hubble
Space Telescope can only resolve details about 100 meters across (the
size of a football or soccer field). Lasers fired from Earth are
bounced off special retro-reflectors left at these sites by the
astronauts, and the faint return pulse is then detected by Earth-based
telescopes equipped with special instruments to measure the Earth-moon
distance, but otherwise, we can't see any man-made equipment left at
the landing sites. If you wish to see the sites through a telescope
for yourself, here are the approximate locations of the Apollo landing
sites (see the Project Apollo Web site,
<URL:http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo.html>, for more
exact locations and descriptions):
APOLLO 11: 0.67 deg. N, 23.49 deg. E, near southwest edge of Mare
Tranquillatis a little northwest of the 6-mile wide crater Moltke.
APOLLO 12: 3.20 deg. S, 23.38 deg. W, in Oceanus Procellarum southeast
of the crater Lansberg (also the landing site of Surveyor 3).
APOLLO 14: 3.67 deg. S, 17.47 deg. W., in Fra Mauro highlands just north
of northwestern rim of large shallow Fra Mauro crater.
APOLLO 15: 26.10 deg.N., 3.65 deg. E., Next to Hadley Rille and
southwest of Mt. Hadley in the lunar Apennine Mountains.
APOLLO 16: 8.99 deg. S., 15.52 deg. E., higlands north of the ruined
crater Descartes and southeast of the double crater Dolland B/C.
APOLLO 17: 20.16 deg. N., 30.77 deg. E., in the southwestern Taurus
Mountains roughly between the craters Littrow and Vitruvius.
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