AbsenseG t1_irp57zs wrote on October 9, 2022 at 11:32 PM

Question. Is it possible to take a telescope and take a high def singular picture of the moon? With no need for stitching hundreds of photos together?

BokehMonkeh t1_irrazzr wrote on October 10, 2022 at 1:24 PM

Yes and no. The problem is of course that the moon is really fucking big, so if you take a photo that fits all of it into a single exposure, you're going to lose out on a lot of details.

So it kinda depends on the quality you want. If you want this level of detail, then no, you can't do that in a single exposure. If you just want a high res photo of the moon, then you definitely can, but it won't look particularly exciting.

AbsenseG t1_irt98rv wrote on October 10, 2022 at 9:30 PM

You probably just answered this question and I just didn’t get it but is it possible to have a ground telescope aimed at a specific location on the moon, such as the Apollo 11 landing site for example, and take a detailed photo of it with one exposure? Enough to make out things left behind, even if kinda blurry?

BokehMonkeh t1_irzthdx wrote on October 12, 2022 at 7:26 AM

In theory yes, in practice no. I'll skip over all the physics of angular resolution, and say that to see details such as footsteps on the moon, you'd need a telescope that magnifies approximately 330,000 times. That'd need a mirror with a diameter of around 160 meters. That's 16 times bigger than the largest telescope on Earth right now.

So in short; could it be made? Yes. Are we even remotely close to doing so? No. It's simply cheaper and easier to send up a satellite with "normal" cameras than to build something like that.