"We choose to go to the Moon.   We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. "

President John F. Kennedy 1962

Earthrise

If our species is to survive in the long term, we will have to leave our home planet.   Apollo has shown that we can take the first step on that long journey.  

Mr. Cripps walking across the actual gantry that took the Apollo astronauts on the greatest adventure

Using one of the Club's telescopes,  you can follow the Moon voyages for yourself.   Don't expect to see equipment on the surface, let alone footprints.  No telescope on Earth can resolve detail greater than about 50m.   However you can look for features on the surface which will allow you to identify the positions of the landings.  The next step is to capture images of your voyage. You can use image enhancement programs like Photoshop to highlight different features, for example increasing the contrast can make the basaltic Mares (Seas) more prominent.  

An image taken with an ETX 105, Philips Toucam Pro webcam and processed in Photoshop

You could aim to make a webpage about either the whole Apollo program or a specific mission.   You can use images form other sources.   NASA has extensive archives of images taken by Orbiter, Apollo and, more recently, Clementine.  Voyages to the Moon are still planned although all of them are unmanned.   You can find out about them by following the timeline link below.  

Yeart 9 students on a trip to London's Science Museum, in front of the actual Apollo 10 command module .   This capsule went around the Moon in 1969 (below)

The Moon is familiar to all of us but with the resolution possible with the club telescopes you really can go on 'The Greatest Adventure' from your back garden.

Bon voyage!

APOLLO LINKS

The Virtual Moon Atlas is a wonderful free download that can help you plan your observations and analyse your images.   It can show you all of the landing sites.

A UK based site:

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum:

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has a 3D slide show of Apollo Moon pictures.   You'll need blue/red filters - great excuse to buy a box of chocolates (the ones with the coloured cellophane wrappers).   Click on their Moon to go there.

The Lunar and Planetary Institute make available the Lunar Orbiter images, which were used to prospect suitable Apollo landing sites.    It includes details about crater sizes to help you scale your images.   I have included a jpg file of a ruler on this page.  You can copy and paste it onto your Moon pictures.   Resize it across a crater of known diameter and you will then be able to scale your picture and measure other features.   Click the LPI logo to go there.

Also from the LPI a great source of Moon exploration images

And a slide show of the sites here

There is a complete linked timeline of Moon exploration - past, present and future at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunartimeline.html

To search the NASA databases click their logo:

The text and a recording of the full Rice University speech is available at: