Can you see the flag on the Moon with a telescope? What about Hubble? The Apollo astronauts left flags on the Moon at each of the 6 lunar landing sites. But how big a telescope would you need to see the flags there from Earth? #shorts

Can I see the American flags left by Apollo astronauts on the moon with my backyard telescope?

The short answer is no.

The slightly longer answer is no, definitely not.

The reason why? The flags are way too small!

With my backyard scope I can see cool mountains and craters, but those are much larger than a flag.

I would need an optical wavelength telescope over 600 feet across to be able to resolve the flags on the moon from Earth.

The largest one currently in operation on Earth? About 30 feet across.

What about Hubble? It’s slightly closer to the moon at times, about 340 miles above earth’s surface, but it’s still only about 6 feet across, not nearly enough.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, though, is orbiting the moon and has some pretty high-resolution imaging capability. You can definitely see the evidence of the moon landings in its images, and in the right lighting conditions you can even see the shadow of the flags still standing on the lunar surface.

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