At 05:30 PM 8/13/01, you wrote:
>This guy is nuts to think that this will work.
>
>He plans on having as many people as possible point laser pointers at the
>moon in an attempt to illuminate an area in the dark part.
>
>Get your laser pointers ready......
>
>http://www.paintthemoon.org/
From:
<http://spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov/NASA.News/NASA.News.Releases/Previous.News.Releases/94.News.Releases/94-07.News.Releases/94-07-21>
7/21/94: APOLLO REFLECTORS CONTINUE TO AID STUDIES OF THE MOON
RELEASE: 94-122
The first laser ranging retroreflector was positioned on the Moon in
1969 by the Apollo 11 astronauts so that it would point toward Earth and be
able to reflect pulses of laser light fired from the ground.
By beaming laser pulses at the reflector, scientists have been able to
determine the round-trip travel time of a laser pulse and provide the distance
between these two bodies at any given time down to an accuracy of about 1 inch
(about 2.5 centimeters).
The laser reflector consists of 100 fused silica half- cubes, called
corner cubes, mounted in an 18-inch-square (46- centimeter) aluminum panel.
Each corner cube is 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) in diameter. Corner cubes
reflect a beam of light directly back toward the point of origin, allowing
scientists to measure the Earth-Moon separation and study the dynamics of the
Earth, the Moon and the Earth-Moon system.
Once the laser ranging experiments began to yield valuable results,
more reflectors were left on the Moon. A reflector identical to the Apollo 11
mission reflector was left by the Apollo 14 crew, and a larger reflector using
300 corner cubes was placed on the Moon by the Apollo 15 astronauts. French-
built reflectors were also left on the Moon by the unmanned Russian Lunakhod 2
mission.
Several observatories have regularly ranged the Moon with these
reflectors: one is located at McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas;
another is located atop the extinct Haleakala volcano on the island of Maui in
Hawaii; another is located in southern France near Grasse.
The Lick Observatory in northern California also has been used in the
past for the lunar laser ranging experiments, and ranging programs have been
carried out in Australia, Russia and Germany. Despite the difficulty of
detecting reflected laser light from the Moon, Dickey said, more than 8,300
ranges have been measured over the last 25 years.
"Lunar ranging involves sending a laser beam through an optical
telescope," Dickey said. "The beam enters the telescope where the eye piece
would be, and the transmitted beam is expanded to become the diameter of the
main mirror, then bounced off the surface toward the reflector on the Moon."
The reflectors are too small to be seen from Earth, so even when the
beam is precisely aligned in the telescope, actually hitting a lunar
retroreflector array is technically challenging. At the Moon's surface the
beam is roughly four miles wide. Scientists liken the task of aiming the beam
to using a rifle to hit a moving dime two miles away.
Once the laser beam hits a reflector, scientists at the ranging
observatories use extremely sensitive filtering and amplification equipment to
detect the return signal, which is far too weak to be seen with the human eye.
Even under good atmospheric viewing conditions, only one photon -- the
fundamental particle of light -- will be received every few seconds.
=== end quote ===
So what makes this guy think his project will produce anything visible?
--Ronn! :)
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I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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