Conspiracy Encyclopedia

Another component of the moon hoax theory is based on the argument that professional observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope should be able to take pictures of the lunar landing sites. The argument runs that if telescopes can “see to the edge of the universe” then they ought to be able to take pictures of the lunar landing sites. This implies that the world’s major observatories (as well as the Hubble Program) are complicit in the moon landing hoax by refusing to take pictures of the landing sites.

• A telescopes angular resolution (ignoring the muddying affects of Earths atmosphere) is limited by the diffraction of light in the optics. This diffraction limit depends linearly on the telescopes aperture so that at optical wavelengths the resolution is about 14.1/D arcseconds where D is the aperture of the telescope in centimeters. For the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in low Earth orbit whose mirror is 2.4 meters across, the diffraction limited angular resolution is about 0.059 arcseconds which corresponds to about 110 meters at the distance of the Moon. In order to resolve an object 1 meters across into a single fuzzy spot would require a telescope 110 times larger than the HST or about 250 meters across. But to resolve such an object with enough detail to recognize what the object is would require perhaps 100 times more resolution still or a telescope whose aperture is some 25 KILOmeters across. Additionally, any groundbased telescope would have to mitigate against the effects of seeing, beyond what is currently possible with adaptive optics.
• Leaving aside the issue of maximum resolution, the Hubble Space Telescope was, in fact, used to image the surface of the moon in 1999. A gallery of the pictures that were taken can be seen here.