"Keith Larson" wrote in message
...
Hi Everyone

I am new to this newsgroup and figured I would chime in.

What about looking on the moon? The moon might be a great place for ET
to set up and observe from a distance.

As an amateur astronomer I am asked many many times if we can see the
Lunar Lander or the flag. This is of course beyond todays optics
(especially mine) but glint reflections are easy. Just consider the
retroreflector that was left behind by Apollo. Radar on the other hand
should be able to resolve something like the LEM, and presumably
something left behind by ET.

So why not start with a systematic search of the moon?

Ah! This brings back old memories!
I remember as a young person being fascinated by the Moon and
particularly by a book by H.P. Wilkins called "Our Moon" (I still
have this book, dated 1954). He had a chapter tiltled "Mysteries
of the Moon" where he spoke of mysterious happenings on the
Moon ("flashes of light", "glints", "outgasing", and perhaps
observing of meteor strikes on the Moon). For example here
is a sentence from the book: "On September 26, 1788,
Schroeter, while observing the crescent moon, saw a whitish
bright spot, just like a star, suddenly shine out in the earthshine
among the peaks of the Alps to the southeast of the crater Plato".
Schroeter and others looked for this phenomena again but it
was not seen by them again. Then on 01 Jan 1865 it was spotted
again by another astronomer named Grover. I don't think it has
been sighted again. Who knows what it was! But certainly if
it was real then a high resolution survey of the moon might show
evidence of something odd going on (if a result of ETI ...). Who
knows, perhaps, there really is a "monolith" waiting there on the
moon for us to find :-)

There is still alot of interest, among amateur astronomers, of
transient phenomena occuring on the moon. There is also the
"lunatic fringe" (well adapted terminology of course. Lunar
Transient Phenomena (LTP) is discussed (probably) in all
books regarding the moon. See for example "Observing
the Moon", by Gerald North, Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0 521 62273 3 (hardback).

Well, in summary, yes, it is a good idea to do a very detailed
systematic search of the Moon ...
Al



Best regards
Keith Larson