Re: Apollo's Laser Reflecting 'Corner Cubes'

On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 09:52:29 GMT, "CWatters"
<colin.watters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Gave us:


"Roy L. Fuchs" <roylfuchs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hfe642l6s73ekms5olms3d5ps0me2p7g93@xxxxxxxxxx
Supposedly a 1 mm beam is 11 meters wide by the time it gets there.
That's pretty tight. Likely a standard argon tube laser. There are
now much tighter lasers available, so the beam would presumably be a
lot better these days than back then.


Finally found a web site with more info. Suggests divergence is worse than
your figures.....

http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/basics.html

Looks like the spot is 1.8 kilometers wide at the moon and 15 kilometers
wide by the time it arrives back.

As for the OP's original assertion... The earth rotates at about 440m/s so
the reflected spot is only moved about 1000 meters by the earths rotation.
Thats less than 10% of the 15 kilometer reflected spot diameter.


C O O L !
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Apollos Laser Reflecting Corner Cubes
    ... Likely a standard argon tube laser. ... Looks like the spot is 1.8 kilometers wide at the moon and 15 kilometers ... The earth rotates at about 440m/s so ... Thats less than 10% of the 15 kilometer reflected spot diameter. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Apollos Laser Reflecting Corner Cubes
    ... Likely a standard argon tube laser. ... Looks like the spot is 1.8 kilometers wide at the moon and 15 kilometers ... The earth rotates at about 440m/s so ... Thats less than 10% of the 15 kilometer reflected spot diameter. ...
    (sci.physics)