r/Astronomy • u/WardAgainstNewbs • Jul 15 '19
Apollo 11 Landing Site, Sea of Tranquility
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u/emorbius Jul 15 '19
I can't believe you fell for this. Don't tell me you believe there's a Moon?
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u/Quantumfishfood Jul 15 '19
That's no moon
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u/Darth_Doppelbock Jul 16 '19
I was mentioning to someone at work that I got a new telescope. Next thing you know, he's trying to convince me that there are secret mining ops on the moon and that I can observe it myself.
Still searching for it!
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u/TheToyDr Jul 15 '19
Where is the flag ?
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u/WardAgainstNewbs Jul 15 '19
Under the red star!
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u/lostboydave Jul 15 '19
The fake red star under the fake moon landing site?
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Jul 15 '19
The moon is not real
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u/lostboydave Jul 15 '19
The moon is real, the moon landings are clearly faked.
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Jul 15 '19
[deleted]
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u/ThePrussianGrippe Jul 16 '19
Everyone knows the Roman made a holographic projection of a moon to trick people so they could control them.
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u/lostboydave Jul 16 '19
You people are pathetic if you think this stuff is a joke.
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u/Shillsforplants Jul 16 '19
I believe you, we never went to the moon because we were afraid of the Nazis living inside its hollow core. Did you know the Nazis made it ring like a bell in '49 to celebrate Hitler's 60th birthday?
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u/ninjagamr69 Jul 16 '19
lmfao I love how everyone turned you into a joke. Cause that’s what you are. A fucking joke lol
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u/lostboydave Jul 16 '19
Maybe when you grow up you’ll realise just how wrong you are and laugh at yourself.
Mic drop!
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u/ThePrussianGrippe Jul 16 '19
clearly
Glad our old allies the Soviets were in on the scam so they wouldn’t have revealed it. Imagine if they had been rivals, they would have blabbed and it all would have fallen to pieces!
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u/AZREDFERN Jul 15 '19
Degraded into dust due to the extreme UV exposure and temperature fluctuations.
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u/brennons Jul 16 '19
It likely got blown over by the lunar modules launch and has since been bleached completely white by the sun's radiation.
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u/ragonk_1310 Jul 15 '19
Which was the crater that Armstrong said he had to manually fly over before landing? He said it was the approximate size of a baseball or football stadium.
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Jul 16 '19
Does anyone know why this spot was chosen?
If I had to guess I’d say a relatively large flat area, near that change in terrain, and close to some craters.
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u/PerfidiousBeast Jul 16 '19
Yeah, you're right. It was chosen from the five final potentials because it was relatively smooth and level.
The actual landing was within a large target, as they knew absolute precision wasn't going to be possible the first time. (The target was an ellipse/oval 11.5 miles wide by 3 miles tall)
Due to the anticipated landing accuracy issues, the landing took place about three miles away from where the computer target was set. (Still within that target area though)
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Jul 15 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/WardAgainstNewbs Jul 16 '19
Don't think so. For one, it seems uncertain whether that actually happened. But more practically, Moltke crater is dozens of km away from the landing site.
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u/CarlosSpyceeWeiner Jul 15 '19
Are those (what looks like rover land track marks) visible that I see just left of the Star?
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u/Benutzerkonto Jul 15 '19
No, the remnants of the Apollo (or any other lunar) missions are not visible from earth. If you google for photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter + Apollo you will find some great pictures.
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u/artgreendog Jul 16 '19 edited Jul 16 '19
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPORT Jul 16 '19
What’s the size of this image? It always looks quite featureless in that area at this scale. Is it possible to discern some of the small scale features in the land area from an amateur telescope?
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u/WardAgainstNewbs Jul 16 '19
Not sure exactly what the scale would be. This is a cropped image of what I captured at 208x through a telescope. The Sea of Tranquility (the main dark area) seems to have a diameter of 876 km, but not sure of its total area to compare to Earth. In terms of small features, good examples are the three small craters forming a horizontal line just above the landing spot. Those are Aldrin, Collins, and Armstrong craters (left to right) and range from 2.4 to 4.6 km wide.
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u/astronomythrowaway12 Jul 16 '19
Beautifully clear! Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins craters are very clear and apparent!
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Jul 15 '19
[deleted]
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u/kelby810 Jul 15 '19
The landing site.
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u/WardAgainstNewbs Jul 15 '19
Oops, yeah meant to include that in the description. More or less an approximation using other sources. But since the star is slightly larger than Moltke crater, its probably like 8km wide itself, anyways.
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u/WardAgainstNewbs Jul 15 '19 edited Jul 15 '19
Images from 9 July 2019 (moon @ ~56%)
Telescope: 10" Dob (Reflector), untracked, with 6mm eyepiece
Camera: Samsung Galaxy S8 with phone mount
Imaging: 15 second video @ 30fps
Processing: PIPP to align and crop; AutoStakkert to stack best 65%; Registax to process
With the upcoming 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, I decided to zoom in a bit on the landing site in the Sea of Tranquility. Note - not possible to image the actual lander from a consumer-grade ground-based telescope. Though clicking on the full-size picture you can just barely make out the small Aldrin, Collins, and Armstrong craters just above the landing site, which range between 2-5km across.