The Moon, an amazing image

[The Thing]

A very high res image using 22 mosaic panes! Fantastic.

http://www.makolkin.ru/Gallery/151004/Moon_151004_dvmak.html

[Roy]

What an incredible image.

[ApophisAstros]

Should we be able to see evidence of the Moon landings on such a hi res image?

Roger

[Rick]

Not by a very long way, no.

The Moon has a diameter of about 3500 kms. The Moon on that image is less than 7,500 pixels across. The best pixels are about 500 metres square.

Assume the landing sites are dead centre, so we're looking directly down on them. Suppose we need pixels ten metres square to see evidence of the lunar landings. (That's probably optimistic.) We'd need an image of the whole Moon that was about 350,000 pixels across for the best pixels to cover about 10 metres square...

...and that's ignoring diffraction limits on resolution.

[ApophisAstros]

Any idea whether we'll ever get that quality so we can view them.
Roger

[Rick]

Using ground-based telescopes it's going to be a matter of resolution. You have to work within the limits of diffraction, and that depends on aperture. My guess is amateurs won't be able to see evidence of human activity on the Moon until we go back and start building cities there.

[Kenny]

The detail on that is amazing.