seeing the moon landers shadow by telescope!!

apparently whilst it is not possible to see the moon landers them selves
through an earth bound telescope (being about 4m across), the VLT could
resolve an image sufficent to see the shadow cast by one, 2 of the 6 are in
locations that would be suitable targets. not really of any scientific
benifit i agree but it would be nice to know they havent been sold for scap
:-)

"Hayley" wrote

not really of any scientific
benifit i agree but it would be nice to know they havent been sold for
scap :-)

It would be somewhat more exciting to find they had been sold for scrap ;-)

S

Hayley wrote:
apparently whilst it is not possible to see the moon landers them selves
through an earth bound telescope (being about 4m across), the VLT could
resolve an image sufficent to see the shadow cast by one, 2 of the 6 are in
locations that would be suitable targets. not really of any scientific
benifit i agree but it would be nice to know they havent been sold for scap
:-)

Try to capture a glint of light from the gold-colored foil covering
the landers at local sunset. This only requires light-capturing
ability, not resolution.

Wasn't it Father Haskell who wrote:

Try to capture a glint of light from the gold-colored foil covering
the landers at local sunset. This only requires light-capturing
ability, not resolution.

That's a good idea.

The glint should vary in brightness as the lighting angle changes in a
way that's different to what you see from rocks. Take a stack of images
and process them to emphasise the differences instead of averaging the
frames.

That makes it better than looking for the shadow, because the shadow of
a lander would look much the same as the shadow of a similarly sized
rock.

--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure