The biggest telescope (The Gran Telescopio Canarias) is about 409", yet it cant resolve any object we have put on the moon. Not by a long shot. Even if you linked every telescope on earth together we cant see anything on the moon.
But a 24" one can see a car that's more than 100,000km further than the moon?
The car isn't resolved, either. At that distance, it's a point source of light.
It doesn't add up. It stinks of a con
It doesn't seem to add up to you because you don't know much about optics. This is your problem, not anyone else's.
So in other words, resolved.
No, not resolved. It's a point source of light. If it were resolved, it would be an extended source of light.
If I look at the Alpha Centuari system, I see one star, using a telescope, I see 2 stars. Other star resolved
Your naked eye with its dilated pupil diameter of maybe 6 to 7 mm lacks the resolution to "split" that binary star system, so the binary appears to be a point source. The much larger entrance pupil of the telescope can resolve the binary into a pair of point sources. Theoretically, larger optics allow greater resolution than smaller optics, and that holds, but only up to a point because of limitations to resolution due to atmospheric effects.
If you want to try something more challenging, try splitting the "double double",
epsilon Lyrae. It is a system of two double stars. It is possible for people with very high visual acuity under excellent condtions to resolve the system into two point sources, but most people see it as a single point source. In binoculars or a marginally good telescope, it is resolved into a pair of point sources. In a good good telescope, each of those point sources is further resolved into a pair of point sources.
If the resolution of a 24" telescope is able to pick up a spec of light from something a few meters across at a distance of nearly 500,000km then using a telescope nearly 20 times bigger should be able to see things much closer in much better resolution.
Theoretically, yes, but the earth's atmosphere keeps telescopes from performing to their theoretical limits. Especially very large ones.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/stargazers-corner/observing-at-the-diffraction-limit/Such as much larger objects left on the moon. But even if you combined all the telescopes on Earth to work in tandem we are told it is still not enough. But hey, we can see a car at nearly twice the distance. Really rab, even you should be thinking critically here
We can see it's there as an unresolved point of light. It would have to be resolved to be distinguishable as a car. Its angular dimensions are too small to resolve, though, so we only see it as a point of light.
You have to wonder why there are no satellites orbiting the moon. We have a few for Mars right? We had Cassini orbit Saturn for 2 decades right. But nothing for the moon. You could put one in orbit in under 3 days and start taking incredibly high detailed pictures of the moon. You could deploy an orbiting telescope around the moon. Why is the moon so secretive?
One has to wonder how you don't know that there are. Artificial satellites have orbited the moon since the 1960s.