Anyway… To clarify, I think my above post is sufficient to establish that given the stated specs on Hubble, Hubble can image galaxies but not image things on the moon… Since spy satellites apparently have around the same resolution, they aren’t getting pictures of the moon lander either.
So, would someone like to tell me again why there’s some big conspiracy to not point Hubble at the moon, since it’s SOOOOO obvious that since it can image galaxies, it can image the moon too?
Yeah, you have clarified it on both points. Both that Hubble cannot resolve such objects on the Moon, and the resolution in its deep space – which often is far more distant than the figure you cite, but that does not change the point – photographs is not as remarkable as what probably much of the public and I mistakenly gave it credit for.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Yeah, you have clarified it on both points. Both that Hubble cannot resolve such objects on the Moon, and the resolution in its deep space – which often is far more distant than the figure you cite, but that does not change the point – photographs is not as remarkable as what probably much of the public and I mistakenly gave it credit for.[/quote]
Curiously enough my 25 million light year example showed that the Hubble’s resolution of 2.5e-7 radians leaves much on the table and that the figures still workout for deeper objects. If Hubble can pick up ~6 light year wide objects at 25 million light years, it can pick up still relatively small objects at much greater distance.
So while my calculations are crude at best, they still are consistent with getting nice images of objects much deeper out then M 101.
Basically I foolishly let myself get deceived by various articles by populist science authors claiming things such as that the HST had resolution so fine as to be able to look up a mosquito’s asshole at 1000 miles and tell whether it was coming down with a prostate condition or not.
In the writing business, which I’m really not in though there were a couple of years that I earned most of my income from it, it’s known that in many areas it’s necessary, if you want to do well anyway, to make the reader feel really positive about something. For example, the various magazines for owners of various kinds of small pets will always put really positive spin on everything. You will actually believe that ferrets, for example, will use a litter box and be clean. Perhaps once a year a ferret-owner magazine might let slip the fact that a ferret that uses the box 95% of the time is doing really, really, really well. The problem is they poop 10 or 15 times a day, so if you have two of them, pretty much every day even one meeting that standard is going to shit on the rug. And most ferrets will come nowhere near the 95%.
But you wouldn’t sell magazines giving a depressing picture like that.
Similarly, putting in your article about the Hubble that it could not even pick up a house-sized object on the Moon would just not leave the reader feeling satisfied.
Still, I really should have known.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Basically I foolishly let myself get deceived by various articles by populist science authors claiming things such as that the HST had resolution so fine as to be able to look up a mosquito’s asshole at 1000 miles and tell whether it was coming down with a prostate condition or not.
In the writing business, which I’m really not in though there were a couple of years that I earned most of my income from it, it’s known that in many areas it’s necessary, if you want to do well anyway, to make the reader feel really positive about something. For example, the various magazines for owners of various kinds of small pets will always put really positive spin on everything. You will actually believe that ferrets, for example, will use a litter box and be clean. Perhaps once a year a ferret-owner magazine might let slip the fact that a ferret that uses the box 95% of the time is doing really, really, really well. The problem is they poop 10 or 15 times a day, so if you have two of them, pretty much every day even one meeting that standard is going to shit on the rug. And most ferrets will come nowhere near the 95%.
But you wouldn’t sell magazines giving a depressing picture like that.
Similarly, putting in your article about the Hubble that it could not even pick up a house-sized object on the Moon would just not leave the reader feeling satisfied.
Still, I really should have known.[/quote]
You could pick up my house, it’s a McMansion.
The moon landings happened. Conspiracy nuts need to get over it.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Basically I foolishly let myself get deceived by various articles by populist science authors claiming things such as that the HST had resolution so fine as to be able to look up a mosquito’s asshole at 1000 miles and tell whether it was coming down with a prostate condition or not.
In the writing business, which I’m really not in though there were a couple of years that I earned most of my income from it, it’s known that in many areas it’s necessary, if you want to do well anyway, to make the reader feel really positive about something. For example, the various magazines for owners of various kinds of small pets will always put really positive spin on everything. You will actually believe that ferrets, for example, will use a litter box and be clean. Perhaps once a year a ferret-owner magazine might let slip the fact that a ferret that uses the box 95% of the time is doing really, really, really well. The problem is they poop 10 or 15 times a day, so if you have two of them, pretty much every day even one meeting that standard is going to shit on the rug. And most ferrets will come nowhere near the 95%.
But you wouldn’t sell magazines giving a depressing picture like that.
Similarly, putting in your article about the Hubble that it could not even pick up a house-sized object on the Moon would just not leave the reader feeling satisfied.
Still, I really should have known.[/quote]
I wouldn’t worry about it, I fuck up all the time too and say stupid stuff.
EDIT: Like just there… I confused posters and the order of posts.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Basically I foolishly let myself get deceived by various articles by populist science authors claiming things such as that the HST had resolution so fine as to be able to look up a mosquito’s asshole at 1000 miles and tell whether it was coming down with a prostate condition or not.
[/quote]
Ha, I’m sure if you were creative enough you could come up with some very impressive sounding facts about Hubble.
This isn’t directed against you, but this is why in general I get so worked up over people making decisions on complicated topics like evolution or the big bang based on popularized accounts. You know, the whole, “Based off what I read in such and such popular article on evolution, I just think the theory is too full of holes to be taken seriously” thing. Nevertheless people run around thinking they are experts on evolution or the big bang because they’ve read a few popular accounts.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m no expert in either biology or cosmology, but I do know enough about my own field to know how distorted and uninformative popularized accounts of science and mathematics are.
Interesting blog post about telescopes and what they can or cannot resolve.
http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2009/07/moon_landing_conspiracy_debunk.php
The “moon landing is a hoax” conspiracy theory is a curious one. There’s no real political angle involved, unlike the 911 “Truthers” or Obama “Birthers”, and no personal decision affected (unlike the antivaxers who put children needlessly at risk) and I fail to see what is so unbelievable about using a big rocket to send people to and back from our moon.
What’s gained by someone claiming that it never happened? Why is it comforting to their world view? In other words, what would it change for them to see irrefutable proof (for them) that we did go?
I don;t think it’s a hoax. But what im saying is that the technology to look at the moon, right where we landed, is very easy for us at this stage. I don’t care if it’s the Hubble or another machine, we have the technology to do this fairly easily. So why doesn’t NASA do it and put it all to rest instead of coming up for elaborate explanations and such. A single picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe they didn’t think of it?
Perhaps for the same reason that the US Government doesn’t have a plan to do a billion dollar mapping expedition of the North Pole to prove that there isn’t a secret entrance there to a hollow Earth, as some suspect to be the case.
Lacking photographs from lunar near-orbit (which it turns out is how it would have to be done) of the Apollo 11 landing site just isn’t in the top 1000 list of problems needing attention.
If the Apollo sites are so photographed in the future, I expect that will be entirely a byproduct of other mapping. And they would be cool pics: but not worth paying a billion dollars for.
[quote]Gregus wrote:
I don;t think it’s a hoax. But what im saying is that the technology to look at the moon, right where we landed, is very easy for us at this stage. I don’t care if it’s the Hubble or another machine, we have the technology to do this fairly easily. So why doesn’t NASA do it and put it all to rest instead of coming up for elaborate explanations and such. A single picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe they didn’t think of it? [/quote]
See what Bill said. Besides, I thought there was a recent lunar probe that DID take these pictures? Maybe I should look for the link.
[quote]Gregus wrote:
I don;t think it’s a hoax. But what im saying is that the technology to look at the moon, right where we landed, is very easy for us at this stage. I don’t care if it’s the Hubble or another machine, we have the technology to do this fairly easily. So why doesn’t NASA do it and put it all to rest instead of coming up for elaborate explanations and such. A single picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe they didn’t think of it? [/quote]
Two seconds of searching for “Pictures lunar landing site” turned up this (very first link):
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jul_lroc.htm
As I mentioned twice now in this thread, there currently is a probe in lunar orbit snapping pictures of the old lunar landing sites.
Sometimes I wonder if you guys really do much honest searching before you complain about this stuff. Quick Google searches would have answered both the question of whether or not the Hubble can image the lunar landing sites and whether or not NASA recently has taken pictures of the lunar landing sites in some form or another.
I had known that such a probe was scheduled but didn’t know of that news reported on the 17th that such pictures have already been taken. Often there’s a lot of time involved in any such project. Thanks.
Whether those pictures are good enough resolution for those feeling that pictures were needed of these sites may be another (and an unimportant, IMO) matter though.
When I had previously read of the planned purposes of this mission, the stated purposes did not include photographing the landing sites. Rather it is general mapping and for the purpose of identifying future landing sites of interest, as well as finding possible ice.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Whether those pictures are good enough resolution for those feeling that pictures were needed of these sites may be another (and an unimportant, IMO) matter though.
[/quote]
Sadly you’re probably right.
If anything I think these images show just how difficult it is to get good pictures of something like the lunar lander. Here NASA sent a probe surely equipped with what were the best cameras they could reasonably fit on it and that was as good as the resolution got. The only way you’re going to get to get the sort of obvious, crystal clear images of the lander and footprints that the skeptics want is to actually put someone back there on the moon and take the pictures.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
<<< . The only way you’re going to get to get the sort of obvious, crystal clear images of the lander and footprints that the skeptics want is to actually put someone back there on the moon and take the pictures.
[/quote]
They’ll say we spoofed that too.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
stokedporcupine8 wrote:
<<< . The only way you’re going to get to get the sort of obvious, crystal clear images of the lander and footprints that the skeptics want is to actually put someone back there on the moon and take the pictures.
They’ll say we spoofed that too.[/quote]
They’re always one step ahead of us…
Please. I’d like to see pictures of Saturn too. I also always kind of wondered what Pluto looked. I have a pretty nice camera. Next clear night I’ll just point at the sky and click. I’ll post the pictures here. Everyone will probably be interested.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
My mistake, I should have done the calculation or found a source that did (the first link only asserted it) rather than using my (wrong) opinion of the resolution of the HST.
As a completely separate point, that’s really not just what I’d had it cracked up to be. For illustration, let’s take that 384,400 km and convert it to 384 km, which is a fairly modest orbital height above the Earth. (Not as low as a spy satellite can be, though.)
315 feet then converts to 315/1000ths of a foot, or basically about 4 inches not counting effect of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Either the claims of what spy satellites can do are lies, or Hubble is no or little better than them, whereas I had wrongly figured that, if not for the Earth’s atmosphere, at such a distance it would surpass the spy satellites for resolution. It cost a ton more anyway and has a bigger mirror so theoretically it should.
[/quote]
OK claims of what the spy satellites can do are lies. Too many people get their info from hollywood movies. Decent spy shots (and google earth maps) are taken by planes, not satellites.
To compare hubble to a spy satellite is wrong as well. Hubble is designed to look at huge things that are a very long way away using various EM wavelengths. Spy satellites are designed to look at troop movements and buildings here on Earth.
For the person that said why can’t we take the shuttle to the moon, well because it is not designed for that. It is designed to put satellites in orbit and return to earth. Taking it to the moon would be like crossing the atlantic in a tugboat.