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In what no doubt is seen as a futile experiment, recently I shone my 100 milliwatt green laser though the 10 inch scope at the biggest laser reflector Apollo crews left on the Moon, after looking up a map of its location, then, Id quickly take away the laser and look throuhg the scope in the hope of seeing a return 4 secs later. I saw nothing. The NAS's resident mirror maker George estimated that even properly focussed the spot might be several Kms across by the time it reaches the moon, and the reflector is only about a metre oor so across if that, so thats a tiny part of that 100 mw to be reflected back. later on I read that the lasers use to actually do this from Earth are around 4 watts or so, much more powerful than mine.
Still, it was interesting to try. Looking through my 6 inch scope along side, I could clearly see a bright green dot projected on high Currus clouds shining the laser through the 10 inch scope, as a 10 inch wide beam is much less divergent than a 2 mm wide beam.
Scott
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