In how much detail could the Hubble Space telescope see the moon surface?
1 Answer
May 29, 2016
Hubble is a powerfull instrument. Sitting in New York it could see two baseballs in San Francisco separated by 1 meter.
Unfortunately the distance New York-San Francisco (around 4000 km) is nothing compared with the astronomical distances.
The Moon is at 370,000 km from Earth (and from Hubble) so the telescope can see objects with a separation greater than approximately 100 m
Two objects closer than 100 m are indistinguishable for Hubble.
That's why we cannot see where the Apollo missions landed, the flag etc.