Is the American flag still on the moon?

[Zebra]

@Triskadecamus

You can see a quarter, well enough to read heads or tails at ten feet, if you see really well. How well do you suppose you would do calling heads or tails for a quarter on the Washington Monument, if you were looking from Miami?

Tris

I’m guessing you would need 50/50 vision.

[Contrapuntal]

@Zebra

I’m guessing you would need 50/50 vision.

Ya think?

[Chronos]

Look out! It’s coming right for us!!

Yes and no. It’s approaching us, but it’s probably going to miss. We just don’t know by how much, since it’s really hard to measure transverse motions of celestial objects.

I always assumed that every galaxy would appear only as big as a star.

Not at all. Even the most distant galaxies observed in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field are (slightly) resolved, but almost all stars can’t be resolved at all with current technology (I think that alpha Cen and a couple of red giants are the only exceptions, and them only barely and with the best of scopes). No matter what magnification you use on a star, it’ll still appear as just a point.

[Muffin]

@alphaboi867

What about the footprints? Are they still there?

Good thinking. Once we eliminate the footprints of the American astronauts, the footprints remaining must belong to the SOB who snuck onto the Nevada sound stage and stole the flag!

[rbroome]

@Iggins

Tails!

Heads!

so one of us is close enough to see.

[Hostile_Dialect]

Speaking of conspiracy theories, I heard a good one recently. I was complaining to a soon-to-be-sex-partner (it was a weird, weird night) about how much hotter it was in El Cajon, CA than in La Mesa, CA, even right on the border between the two cities. She told me matter-of-factly that the government probably sets the temperature higher in the dome there.

What?

You know, the dome they have over El Cajon. Because they don’t like the people in El Cajon. They consider those people less valuable.

…

[Fear_Itself]

We have had several threads regarding the condition of the flags left on the Moon by Apollo astronauts:

How much has the American flag on the Moon deteriorated?
Is the American flag still on the moon?
The American flag on the moon

Well, new photos of the moon taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance OrbiterCamera (LROC) reveal that five of the six flags planted on the Moon are still standing, and in good enough condition to cast a recognizable shadow:

“From the LROC images it is now certain that the American flags are still standingand casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11,” LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson wrote in a blog post today(July 27). “Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported that the flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent engine during liftoff of Apollo 11, and it looks like he was correct!”

We still don’t know if they are faded, but the fabric has not disintegrated so severely as to prevent casting a shadow.

[Colibri]

Moderator Note]

Since the post above was in response to several other threads, I have merged it with the longest of them. This is the second one linked, entitled “Is the American flag still on the moon?”

Colibri
General Questions Moderator