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To the moon and back, many times a minute

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Hank Hogan, [email protected]

The moon is spiraling away at 3.8 cm, or about an inch and a half, a year. But don’t worry. Given that it sits at a distance of about 385,000 km, or just under 240,000 miles, there will be no noticeable change in its appearance for a long, long time. For almost 20 years from the late 1960s, astronomers measured the Earth-to-moon distance by beaming a laser from the 2.7-m McDonald Observatory Smith Telescope to retroreflectors placed on the moon. Courtesy of McDonald Observatory. Detecting that slight lunar movement has been possible because of photonics technologies and the only Apollo...Read full article

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    Published: July 2009
    photonics technologiesResearch & TechnologyretroreflectorsTech PulseLasers

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