NASA?s most advanced telescope complete after 20 years (PHOTO)

Well at least it should be able to make detailed pictures of the moon landing locations and silence the moon landing hoax people...

Sure, they've already got the fake bitmapped images loaded into the on-board memory.

--sp

It's a misleading publicity statement or a misquote. The resolution challenge is always to separate two closely spaced point sources.

I suspect the moon might be a bit on the warm side for seeing a bumblebee - which itself would be having problems of its own.

You can see stars with your own eyes. None of them subtend an angle on the sky bigger than 10mas but you still see them on signal to noise.

resolution is 1.22lambda/D

Telescope mirror 6.5m across

operating in NIR 1-5um so ~5x10^-7 radians ~ 0.1" arc

operating in thermal 5-30um band ~3x10^-6 rad ~ 0.9"

(taking resolution at mid band approx back of envelope)

The latter resolution is broadly comparable with the typical resolution of a ground based optical scope without AO on a good night. It will yield a lot of interesting stuff since it is a new band to explore in high resolution and these wavelengths let you see into star formation.

You could already see the footprints around the lander bases from ground-based telescopes even before adaptive optics. The morons won't be moved.

There's a great video from one of them on youtube in which he actually analyzes the partial schematics of the Saturn V electronics that were released to the public, and he claims the schematics are fakes. One of his arguments is "this counter circuit won't work if you reset it to zero", but the circuit is clearly a count-down circuit that doesn't even have a reset line. It has a "load N" signal to preload a non-zero number. He's also very suspicious of what looks like voltage suppression (maybe for lightning strikes) which he says is not necessary.

I wonder if the psychology of those people is similar to that of the people who think the US is evil. I don't see them denying anything that any other country did.

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Thanks for the reply. I didn't realize I had forgotten so much. 4

That is complete nonsense. You can't even see the lunar landers from Earth. The resolution limits for ground based observations of the moon with the largest instruments are worse than for any other solar system object since they cannot track it well. The Moon is in orbit around the Earth and as such is a nuisance to track.

Most ground based optical scopes are limited to about 0.25" resolution on the most exceptional nights with 0.5" being more typical ~ 2x10^-6 rad. At the lunar surface under the most favourable supermoon conditions when the moon is The morons won't

They are morons without a shadow of a doubt, but there is no Earth based scope that can resolve footprints on the moon - not even close. Even the LEM itself is an order of magnitude beyond what is possible with the best Earth based AO systems (if they could track the moon). Hardly any of the main scientific optical telescopes can even track the moon to begin with - it would not be worthwhile.

The best that has ever been acheived from the ground is ESO's 8.2m YEPUN scope which managed 0.07" arc aka 130m. They tricked it into guiding on a nearby mountain as part of an AO engineering test.

I don't understand how this cult of "we didn't go to the moon" grew up. Even the *Russians* accept that the US landed a man on the moon!

Both sides intercepted each others interplanetary telemetry.

The "supermoon" means the full moon coincides with the moon perigee, and the "good supermoon" means the (varying) perigee is especially low this time.

However, if one wanted to observe lunar landing sites from the earth, full moon is probably not the best time to do it. It would be better to observe the landing site when it is some short distance from the terminator, because the elongated shadows of the objects make them easier to observe.

You're right. I've seen pictures of the landing sites but those were taken from moon orbit. I must have been thinking of other images. The point is the same though.

Come on! Everyone knows that those were taken in the Nevada desert.

Don't joke about it!

You have just elected a deranged conspiracy theorist Trump who will likely have US history rewritten to say NASA did not go to the moon.

I have a distant relative married to a Russian woman. The woman's mother worked closely with Putin in the KGB and successors. Clearly neither can be dismissed as yokels.

The woman and her mother are resolute that the US didn't go to the moon, and that it is a US media conspiracy.

Lunatics live all over the world, not only in the US.

But at the time the landings happened, the USSR was feverishly trying to do the same thing and beat the Americans to it. Do you think they would have thrown the towel when they had not been absolutely convinced they had been beaten?

Odd. I have yet to meet any Russian scientist who disputes that the USA went to the moon and brought back samples of moon rock.

At the time it was done in 1969 faking it would have been almost as hard as doing it for real. One of the technology spin offs also resulted in cars no longer dribbling their vital fluids onto the drive.

Seems like more in the US than elsewhere - how else do you explain a reality TV star famous for leading the "Birther" conspiracy theory movement with no previous experience of office being elected President?

Both sides intercepted each others telemetry. It was no coincidence that the first image of the moon was published in an English newspaper since Jodrell Bank was perfectly placed for eavesdropping Luna 9.

They got the aspect ratio slightly wrong but otherwise it was perfect.

They do have diabolically antiquated constitution, and a - small - majority of voters actually did reject Trump, but the electoral college worked it's usual magic.

The aspect ratio is a trifle arbitrary.

Quite.

But I'm not sure I'd call them lunatics, merely dangerously self-deluding.

You don't have to convince me :)

But an argument can be made that while the Soviets lost the "moon battle", they won the "space war" with Mir, Soyuz etc :)

That is why I write that lunatics live in the US, but also add that some of them live elsewhere too.

And not only at the government agency! HAM radio operators, hobbyists, also listened to the downlink transmissions of at least the later Apollo missions. Amongst them are people from outside of the USA and USSR. They have no incentive in making up what they heard.

A physics master at Kettering Grammar school was famous for it:

They tracked just about everything in orbit from Sputnik 4 onwards.

And annoyed the CIA by disclosing a new Soviet launch site (in 1966).

Indeed. And also Sven Grahn from Sweden, and the Judica-Cordiglia brothers from Italy. (although the latter are a bit controversial)

Why not? You're joking about Trump.