On 28 Mar 2007 09:57:34 -0700, "Ben" wrote:

Claudio asked:
Sorry for this question (hope not to attract trolling replies here), but
do you think, that with better equipment and a series of pictures it
were possible to obtain the last picture with its details also from the
Earth surface?

It's been done by equipment substantially inferior to
Pete's. The trick is to have the shutter open at precisely
the right time. Good seeing is everything.

Hi Ben-

Do you have any examples? I think pulling off an amateur image as good
as the Apollo image is something of a long shot. The resolution of the
image looks to be around 175 meters per pixel, with the finest resolved
structures between 2 and 3 pixels. That requires a telescopic resolution
of better than 1/4 arcsecond. That's theoretically possible with a scope
in the 16-20" aperture range, but at that size, you'll rarely have
correlated seeing across the 1.25 arcminute scale of this image, so even
lucky imaging techniques will be difficult.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to match the resolution of the
Apollo image, only that I think it's at the very edge of what's
possible, and I'm not sure it's been done. You'd certainly need a fairly
large aperture and superb seeing conditions.

The scanned Apollo image is quite small; I wonder what the resolution is
on the original film?

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com