08/28/2026
About half the folks in the West Loop of Chicago where the MOH is located, believe Dinosaurs roamed the Earth when Humans did — so what % of them would deny that we landed on the Moon?
I posed this question to Chicago’s Astronomer during last night’s Lunar Eclipse Watch Party at nearby Skinner Park.
Attached is a pic of the Moon taken last night with my iPhone, with the Apollo landing sites mapped onto it as confirmed by Russia, China, India and others — the first point he made.
Darker areas are volcanic plains, lighter areas are mountainous regions — giving you a sense of topography. Astronauts landed mainly on the plains because they were flat, safer, and closer to the core of the Moon.
Apollo 17 was the last visit, and carried with it a Lunar Rover which is still up there.
Apollo 11, 14, 15 left behind Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflector Arrays (LRRA), designed to reflect a laser beam back to earth so the exact change in distance can be recorded.
Of those 3, Apollo 15’s was the largest and easiest to target.
When I mentioned to Chicago’s Astronomer that the Museum of Holography is in possession of a 7’ long Helium-Neon laser that could generate that required beam — but only when paired with the right telescope as speced by NASA — his eyes lit up. 😅
On the receiving end we’d need about a 1.8 meter reflector like what they have at the nearby Adler Planetarium OR an array of about 8 x 12” Telescopes working independently to capture enough time stamped photons to make this work.
The latter is well within Chicago Astronomer’s community capabilities, and more in tune with our crowdsource approach.
The collaboration has begun.
Museum of Holography
