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

yes that is a good idea, maybe it would be possible to use
that image analysis software thats used to look for tiny variations
in a stars intensity as a planet passes in front of it, to look for the
reflection.

ive just realised I forgot to mention that the russians also landed
an unmanned soil gathering lander and something else as well i believe.

"Father Haskell" wrote in message
oups.com...

Mike Williams wrote:
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.

Compare to a model of a site in question, at given sun inclination --
does the glint brighten and dim at close to the rate seen
with the model? No hard calculations, just photograph while
moving a flashlight over a plastic model.

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.

Easier to discriminate color than texture with less than optimum
optics.