I know we went to the moon. I have touched a moon rock at both the Cape and the Air and Space museum. My question is and Goddard could do this for surveying purposes I guess. Why don’t they aim Hubble at the moon and get some “magnificent” shots of all of the debris left behind on the moon from the Apollo missions tha landed there? Wouldn’t a picture of the flag gently not swaying make a GREAT picture? If Hubble can see to the ends og the universe and get so-called stunning photos, why not aim it at the moon and do the same. I think the population would appreciate what the telescope can do more if NASA showed us something we could relate to.
The short answer is that the Hubble scope does not have sufficient resolution for the job.
Why not use the hubble telescope to look at the lunar lander
But we do have images of the landing sites taken from lunar orbit thanks to the LRO:
The basic problem is that unless we drug and kidnap some people, lash them to an acceleration couch and physically launch them to the Sea of Tranquility, they will forever deny any sort of proof that the government wasn’t lying about moon landings to fool the Russians and their own people.
Because the government can never be trusted, y’know. And apparently the Russians are really stupid about science stuff and bought NASA’s lies hook line and sinker. Never mind that they are actually better at the space stuff than we are.
You lucky son of a gun.
I agree. Even if it were possible, there’s no way that would convince them. They’d probably think it was photoshopped. Heck, they probably don’t believe the Hubble exists.
There are apparently still people who believe the Earth is flat. At some point you just throw your hands up and walk away.
You’re right that they wouldn’t be convinced, but couldn’t we do it anyway?
We couldn’t. People would choose not to believe, or else they would claim not to believe just to get a reaction from you. I linked a non-believer to pictures from the lunar orbiter (HEY! LOOK! Footprints at the Apollo 14 landing site!) but it was like trying to teach a pig to sing.
Personally, I leave moon hoaxers alone. I am afraid that I tend to use smaller and simpler words when talking to them, though.
Maybe if the government reported that it was actually all a hoax…
Ah, I love that video. I think Buzz has the correct response to this foolishness. 
You mean people can’t relate to the laser reflector they left up there ? Granted, bouncing lasers off a mirror is a bit… abstract, I guess. But any amateur astronomer with a bit of gear can do it any day of the week, if the weather’s not too bad.
Of course, precious few Moon Hoaxers are astronomers 
So when you touched did it feel ‘moony’ or something?
That is terrible ‘proof’ that we went to the moon.
Personally I attack hoaxers by going to their underlying need to feel special and better. After all, they must think I’m an idiot because I believe we went to the moon. How freaking special they are at being able to see through the lies. They certainly are not living a life of quiet desperation. OH no not them. They are special.
This isn’t even an argument, let alone a proof. Moon rocks are much better than simple ad hominem, regardless of how pitiful the hominem in question is.
Not really. ‘Those rocks are fakes. I’ve got a rock like that out in my driveway’.
This is a case where the true disbelievers have so little to gain. I think Zebra has identified the root cause.
How do you do this? What do you need? Have cheap telescope and laser pointer cat toy. By “weather” I assume you mean clouds?
Wasn’t there a Two Ronnies scene where the short arse one bought a moon rock off the coal man?
You could try explaining the evidence to them. There are different categories of moon hoax believers. At one end of the spectrum are the hard core conspiracy theorists, and at the other the casual ones who saw a bad TV programme. The latter’s position is based on ignorance, so it’s not impossible to change their mind. I’ve had some success with this.
Here is a good site that debunks most the theories presented by the hoax believers:
Again, no, Hubble doesn’t really have the magnification power to resolve little things like the flags planted on the moon.
There’s a common misconception that what makes telescopes awesome is magnification. In fact, the key thing in discussing telescopes is aperture - the amount of light they can gather. Many, many thing in the sky aren’t too SMALL to see, they’re too DIM. The classic example always used is the spectacular Andromeda Galaxy:
That picture is a dead on size comparison of how big those things look from Earth… if Andromeda wasn’t too dim. If it was brighter it’d look just like that comapred to the Moon, but it’s not, so on a clear night it just looks like a fuzzy star; you can only see the nucleus, and not well.
More aperture, a wider collecting mirror, allows you to gather more light and make dim things look brighter. Hubble is capable of doing what it does because it has a very wide aperture - about seven feet, if I recall correctly, which is one hell of a lot bigger than anything you’ll see at an astronomy club - and of course is in space, thereby bypassing the interference of the atmosphere.
However, Hubble can’t really magnify significantly more than lots and lots of ground-based telescopes. The point of Hubble wasn’t to magnify so much as it was to get light-collecting power into space.
The Moon, and the things on it, doesn’t lack for brightness. You can get spectacular views of the Moon with a backyard telescope in the middle of New York City.
I’ve heard claims that satellite images are hi enough res to read license plates on cars. Pics of earth from satellites are available online.
So, wouldn’t it be worth while to get a satellite orbiting the moon? The photos would aid in studying the lunar landscape in detail. There would also be images of the landing sites. It would be fascinating to see how much they’ve changed since 1970.