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The Moon

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Spike_Soad | 02:44 Mon 03rd Apr 2006 | Science
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If you had a powerful enough telescope would you be able to see the flag left on the moon during the moon landing?

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The Hubble telescope would need to be 100-1000 times stronger to obtain any image of a flag on the Moon which is never less that 225 thousand miles away. Even this would probably not be sufficient to distinguish whether it was an American or a Martian flag.


Hubble shoots the Moon <?

Well as the question was ''if you had a powerfull enough telescope'' then I suppose the answer must be yes, as the question allowed any power telescope you want to imagine then you could see anything, What the question should have said was is it practically possible to have a telescope etc.....
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Be hard to spot, since you'd be looking straight down on top of it. Suppose you could look for its shadow as a marker!


But there's also a Hasselblad camera that was left behind. It has a matt chrome finish, so might be shiny enough to stand out against the background!

I saw something like that not long ago EDDIE. Now I can't remember where. I'll see if I can track it down at some point.
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Hi, thanks for all the answers, maybe i should have made the Q more specific, was just wondering thats all, thanks again!

dont mean to pee on your strawberries but the earth's atmosphere would make the flag way too blury to see. this is the reason why satelites are used
Potentially the theorised OWL telescope could see the lander with it's resolution. It's a few years away from being built, but adaptive optics could virtually neutralise the effects of the atmosphere on incoming light from the sky.

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