Are the Lick telescopes able to see Apollo equipment left on the moon?

On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Eric wrote:

> Is one of the Lick telescopes strong enough to take a picture of the
> equipment left on the moon by the Apollo Astronauts?
> Eric

Hello Eric,

In short, no. The equipment left by the astronauts is smaller than the
smallest angular sizes visible due to atmospheric blurring. I have heard
rumors that the Hubble Telescope might be able to spot the shadow of the
lunar lander near sunrise or sunset on the moon, but I haven't heard of
any attempts to try and photograph this. The moon is a hard target for
most large telescopes. It is bright, and it moves at a different rate of
speed than the sky, making it very difficult to take a non-blurred image.

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