Lunar Writing Exercise
Atmospheric dispersion prevents precision writing at lunar distances with terrestrial laser cannon, and the giant mirror for burning messages upon the surface of Mars, (advocated by Charles Cros), simply wouldn't do the job.
Rockets are best for that sort of work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkBOPV3Fywk @ 1:10
The lights seen by William Radcliffe Birt and Thomas Gwyn Elger were of sufficient interest that the Apollo 11 astronauts were asked to see if they saw anything of interest in that area.
Originally posted by dpaterso
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"Cros was convinced that pinpoints of light observed on Mars and Venus, probably high clouds illuminated by the sun, were the lights of large cities on those planets. He spent years petitioning the French government to build a giant mirror that could be used to communicate with the Martians and Venusians by burning giant lines on the deserts of those planets. He was never convinced that the Martians were not a proven fact, nor that the mirror he wanted was technically impossible to build." ~ Wikipedia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkBOPV3Fywk @ 1:10
"A group of astronomers had been observing extraordinary lights in the lunar crater Plato. The lights had definite arrangement. They were so individualized that Birt and Elger, and the other selenographers, who had combined to study them, had charted and numbered them. They were fixed in position, but rose and fell in intensity.
"...Perhaps there were definite messages in a Morse-like code. There is a chance for the electricity in somebody's imagination to start crackling. Up to April, 1871, the selenographers had recorded 1,600 observations upon the fluctuations of the lights of Plato, and had drawn 37 graphs of individual lights. All graphs and other records were deposited by W.R. Birt in the Library of the Royal Astronomical Society, where presumably they are to this day. A Champollion may some day decipher hieroglyphics that may have been flashed from one world to another."
~ Charles Hoy Fort, New Lands, (part 2 chapter 8)
"...Perhaps there were definite messages in a Morse-like code. There is a chance for the electricity in somebody's imagination to start crackling. Up to April, 1871, the selenographers had recorded 1,600 observations upon the fluctuations of the lights of Plato, and had drawn 37 graphs of individual lights. All graphs and other records were deposited by W.R. Birt in the Library of the Royal Astronomical Society, where presumably they are to this day. A Champollion may some day decipher hieroglyphics that may have been flashed from one world to another."
~ Charles Hoy Fort, New Lands, (part 2 chapter 8)
"Houston, Apollo 11. Looking up at the same area now and it does seem to be reflecting some of the earthshine. I'm not sure whether it was worked out to be about zero phase to - Well, at least there is one wall of the crater that seems to be more illuminated than the others, and that one - if we are lining up with the Earth correctly, does seem to put it about at zero phase. That area is definitely lighter than anything else that I could see out this window. I am not sure that I am really identifying any phosphorescence, but that definitely is lighter than anything else in the neighborhood."
~ Edwin "Buzz" E. Aldrin Jr., http://inamidst.com/lights/lunar
~ Edwin "Buzz" E. Aldrin Jr., http://inamidst.com/lights/lunar
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