"Alex Kilpatrick" wrote in message
...

I thought of this after the previous question about whether a telescope
could see any of the apollo stuff on the moon.

If you were standing on the moon with an average telescope (say 8"),
could you see any man-made landmarks on Earth?

If you look he

http://www.snopes.com/science/greatwal.htm

Alan Bean is quoted as saying that no man-made object is visible from
the moon, but he didn't use a telescope.
There are two seperate 'issues'. The first is 'seeing' an object, and the
second is identifying this as 'man made'. This is the problem about the
Lunar lander 'shadows', since these may well be visible from Earth with the
larger telescopes in the right conditions, and certainly from some of the
recent lunar orbiter mapping pictures, but unless you have identical
pictures taken from before the landers arrived, showing the lack of the same
shadows, you have no proof of human intervention.
On the Earth, the simplest thing to see, will be lights from cities. I'd
think that Hong Kong airport, might well be a candidate with the 8" scope,
but again ideally you'd want 'before and after' pictures, to prove the
island is artificial.

Best Wishes