Lunar landing sites visible from earth12/14/2023 The catalog runs the gamut from batteries and wires to golf balls and even human waste. If you explore the Apollo landing sites with a small telescope, you won’t be able to see any of the objects left behind by the astronauts, as they are all too small to be resolved by even the largest telescopes.NASA says many of the items from the Apollo missions are either historic or had a significant scientific value, but to any unsuspecting reader, some of the objects on the list might appear similar to those you would find at a junkyard or even a garage sale. If you have a fairly large telescope, at least 8 inches aperture, and lighting conditions are just right, you can get a "bird's eye" view of this surface feature yourself. The Apollo 15 site was located in a small valley just west of Mount Hadley, where a rugged mountain range, called the Lunar Apennines, forms a wedge between the Mare Serenitatis and the Mare Imbrium.Ī long, narrow groove meanders across this valley, the Rima Hadley, and the astronauts explored this feature on the ground. Two years later, on July 30 1971, Apollo 15 touched down in a much more mountainous area to the northwest of the Apollo 11 landing site. In most cases, you need to be dead to have a crater named after you. These small craters are a challenge to spot using small amateur telescopes but represent a great rarity: lunar craters named after living people. Aldrin is 2.1 miles (3.4 km) in diameter and Collins is only 1.5 miles (2.4 km) large. Armstrong, at 2.9 miles (4.6 km) is the largest of the three. Today there are three small craters just north of the Apollo 11 landing site named for the three first Apollo astronauts. This location was chosen precisely because it was so flat, as the planners of the lunar mission wanted the first landing to be as easy as possible.Įven so, Neil Armstrong realized that they were headed for a rough area and took over manual control of the lunar lander to put it down on a smoother area, almost running out of fuel in the process. The first Apollo landing on July 20, 1969, took place in the open flats of the Mare Tranquillitatis, just north of Theophilus. Using these craters as landmarks, it becomes possible to pinpoint and examine a couple of the Apollo landing sites. Theophilus and Maurolycus both have prominent central peaks, but Aristoteles has only a couple of small isolated peaks on its floor. It is named after Francesco Maurolico, an obscure 16th century opponent of Copernicus and his heliocentric theory that the Earth revolves around a stationary sun at the center of the solar system.Ī striking feature of Maurolycus is that it appears to have hit and almost completely overlapped a slightly older crater. Maurolycus is an even larger crater, 71 miles (114 km) across and 15,500 feet (4,730 m) deep. The crater's walls rise 3,940 feet (1,200 m) above the surrounding terrain and its floor, complete with a large central peak, lies 14,400 feet (4,400 m) below its rim. Theophilus was the bishop of Alexandria and died in 412 AD. Theophilus is a spectacular crater near the center of the moon’s disk. Aristoteles is a complex crater with terraced walls. Named for the Greek philosopher and scientist who lived in the fourth century B.C., it stretches 54 miles (87 km) across. Aristoteles is a large crater located near the moon’s north pole.
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