# Hubble 'Scope - Lunar landscape **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 15, 2009, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154 "2009-09-15T09:57:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jakesteele](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed8c4c/32.png) [@jakesteele](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jakesteele)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/1 "2009-09-15T09:57:17Z")
With the incredible deep field photos from the Hubble 'scope, I am wondering if you aimed it at the moon and focused it, would you, in effect, be able to read the license plate of a car like our satellites are able to do on earth? If so, have they ever done it to super scrutinize the lunar landscape? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/2 "2009-09-15T10:30:01Z")
[No](http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc.htm). > [@](#): > > The Moon is 384,400 km away. At that distance, the smallest things Hubble can distinguish are about 60 meters wide. The biggest piece of left-behind Apollo equipment is only 9 meters across and thus smaller than a single pixel in a Hubble image. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/3 "2009-09-15T10:54:16Z")
[Here’s](http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/screen/opo9914a.jpg) an example of a shot of the moon taken by the Hubble telescope. BTW, isn’t the “read a license plate from a satellite” thing pretty much an urban myth? (Quite apart from the fact that license plates tend to face, you know, horizontally). Diffraction limits, etc… As the link above points out, the moon is a long way away - several hundred times further away than the Earth is from spy satellites. ---
**Author:** ![cantara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6f9a4e/32.png) [@cantara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cantara)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/4 "2009-09-15T14:21:49Z")
I think the benefit that the Hubble has is the light sensitivity rather than the zoom factor. It is able to aim at a specific spot and maintain that pinpoint for hours/days. There have been a couple of threads in the past that discuss the size of the nebulas and galaxies that Hubble is looking at, and they take up a big portion of the sky. The deep field shot was of an ‘empty’ region of the sky that took 10 days to capture. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/5 "2009-09-15T14:42:25Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > BTW, isn’t the “read a license plate from a satellite” thing pretty much an urban myth? (Quite apart from the fact that license plates tend to face, you know, horizontally). Diffraction limits, etc… > > As the link above points out, the moon is a long way away - several hundred times further away than the Earth is from spy satellites. The factor is more like a 1000 times closer. 60 meter Hubble-moon resolution divided by a 1000 equals .06 meters which is 60millimeters which is 2.4 inches. Its a borderline case. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/6 "2009-09-15T18:20:52Z")
I’ve read that, like \*\*cantara \*\*says, Hubble’s designed to point at things that are so far away from us that they move very slowly across the sky, if at all. In contrast, the Moon moves relatively quickly across the sky - quickly enough that even when in perfect focus, any Hubble images of the moon will necessarily be slightly fuzzy. Hubble simply can’t track something that moves that quickly. It’s much better suited to imaging the really far away stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hubble-scope-lunar-landscape/510154/7 "2009-09-16T00:29:41Z")
Not quite license plate quality, but still [pretty cool](http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/). The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is now on station, and providing some amazing views of the lunar surface. Look toward the bottom left on that page and click on the Apollo section to see our old hardware. We should be getting some better views soon when the orbiter is brought down to its final altitude.