(ORDO NEWS) — Many people love to photograph the Moon, and although we can take amazing pictures from the Earth, it is very difficult to get close-up images of its surface.
It’s all about the huge distance at which we are from the natural satellite of the Earth – 384,400 km. Moreover, the closer we try to bring its surface closer, the more blurry or uneven the images become.
But what if we could take high-resolution images of the Moon’s surface from Earth without relying on satellites currently in lunar orbit?
That is what a team of scientists and engineers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RIS) are now doing with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT).
Thanks to the efforts of scientists, the GBT is now the world‘s largest fully steerable radio telescope, and could become part of a powerful next-generation planetary radar system that scientists can use to study planets, moons, and even asteroids in the solar system.
The radar prototype consists of a low power transmitter that has been designed, tested and aimed at the lunar surface, with the radar signals reflected and received by ten 25m VLBA NRAO antennas.
What’s great about the transmitter is that it only puts out up to 700W of power, which is less than a standard 800-1000W kitchen microwave at 13.9GHz.
The radar prototype was able to image the Tycho crater, which is located in the southern hemisphere of the moon and has a diameter of about 85 kilometers. An image resolution of 5 meters allows you to reveal incredible details of the crater floor.
“It’s amazing what we’ve been able to capture so far using less power than a typical household appliance,” said Patrick Taylor, head of the GBO/NRAO joint radar division.
Taylor described the images of Tycho crater as “…kind of line or polygon features at the bottom of the crater, just to show that you could start doing geology with these images from Earth.”
He also showed the only radar image of the Apollo 15 landing site, at an astonishing 1.25 meters, which he called “the highest resolution image of the Moon ever taken from the earth.”
For context, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LROC) camera aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) can take pictures of the Moon’s surface with a resolution of up to 0.5 meters, which means that this prototype radar can take pictures of the Moon’s surface from Earth in much the same way as satellite currently orbiting the moon itself!
Along with lunar images, the prototype radar also detected in 2021 a “potentially dangerous” asteroid (231937) 2001 FO32, approximately 1 kilometer in diameter. The scientist also found out how close he can come to the Earth.
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