Are There Images of the Lunar Landers from Orbit?

banditski asks: "We have pictures of Mars rovers from taken from orbit, like this photo of Opportunity, but I could not find any of the lunar landers from 60's and 70's? If they do exist, where are they?" More interesting photos from the MRO can be found in an October entry of the Bad Astronomer weblog, and interestingly enough this sentiment was repeated by a couple of posters, there. It won't be until 2008 until we get a fresh pair of 'eyes' on the Moon, but that doesn't mean that there aren't earlier, and just as interesting images buried somewhere on the net. Where can you find interesting orbital photos of the Moon, particularly ones that contain the LEMs, or other photogenic aspects of Tranquility Base?

Comments

here you go

[jcgam69]

A discussion of the difficulty of imaging the landers and a picture: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc .htm

You can look

[doroshjt]

http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html

exactly what you asked for

[jcgam69]

These are the best photos available: http://www.tass-survey.org/richmond/answers/lunar_ lander.html#apollo

LRO is the first since 1972

[apsmith]

The truth is, we've sent far more and better spacecraft to Mars in the last few decades than to the Moon. The only things the US has sent to the Moon since 1972 have been Clementine, a DoD low-cost project that didn't have anywhere near a good enough camera, and Lunar Prospector, another low-budget item that had no camera at all. Galileo swung by briefly, but not enough to take close-range pictures. Europe has sent SMART-1, again decidedly low-budget: it took over a year to get there and was mainly for testing other things besides photography.

But that's the Moon for you - the inner city of the solar system that everybody says they care about but nobody does anything.

Not possible - - yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Telescopes are not an option: http://calgary.rasc.ca/moonscope.htm

No lunar recon probes have had the camera resolution to do it as far as I know. The closest was SMART-1 which was plowed into the moon.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEM1O6BUQPE_0. html

Re:No there aren't

[mark-t]

Albedo is not the same thing as retroreflectivity. Albedo is the ratio of reflected to incident electromagnetic radiation, so it can't be greater than 1.

Retroreflectivity, however, is another matter completely. It's not a ratio, but just a measure of brightness (more or less), so there's no maximum. White clothing, for example, has a retroreflectivity of about one-third. The moon is only modestly better than this, at about one-half, iirc from high school. Most road signs have a retroreflectivity measured in the hundreds. I don't know what the retroreflectivity of the mirror they put on the moon, but I imagine it's no less than what traffic signs are.

Shining a laser at the moon and getting an additional photon back every few seconds is far in excess of getting an additional photon back every hour or two, which is what it would be if the moon's surface alone were responsible for the reflection.

Re:Apollo 12

[darkonc]

Apollo 12 even brought back pieces of Surveyor III. ((The referenced page (astronomy picture of the day) shows surveyor 3 from a distance of .... oh, 50 feet. and the Apollo 12 lunar module from abut 600 feet.))

Yep... The moon's seen it's first example of the very human activity known as looting.