Soon after NASA's new James Webb telescope was deployed, I received several e-mails suggesting it might resolve the Apollo controversy by photographing the landing sites. The unfortunate truth is that expensive bits of kit like Webb and Hubble are rarely if ever pointed at the Moon, or indeed objects within the Solar System: their task is to investigate distant galaxies and nebulae to search for evidence of the earliest days of the Universe. (As I'm sure you know: when you look at the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, you're seeing it as it was two and a half million years ago - it takes light from it that long to reach us!) The Webb telescope will image the very most distant galaxies at a distance in excess of 17 billion light years: light from such objects started its journey soon after the Big Bang.
I was fortunate enough to meet and chat with Sir Patrick Moore on numerous occasions: he frequently commented that a considerable percentage of advances in observational astronomy are made by amateurs. With the increasing availability of professional-standard telescopes, mounts and cameras, transient lunar phenomena, impacts, transits, new comets and asteroids are all areas where back-garden astronomers can - and have - made important observations.
Here are a few images I've taken with my own modest equipment (!) These include transits of Mercury and Venus, and craters on the Moon as small as the 4km craterlet near the famous Straight Wall (arrowed!)
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