Stars Can't Be Seen from Outer Space

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

C&P.

GIYF.

On astronauts seeing stars: www.youtube.com...

A talking point often repeated is: The astronauts say they never saw any stars.
This, of course, isn't true and serves as another example of flawed thinking as Moon Landing Deniers continue to misinterpret the astronauts' statements.
I'm putting this video up as a resource. If anyone ever m

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Stars aren't visible from the Moon when it's illuminated by the Sun. The Apollo astronauts only landed during the "day" when the surface was too bright to make out the stars, just as on Earth, you can't see the stars during the day. Regarding the far side of the Moon - it's not dark - it's illuminated by the Sun (Pink Floyd got it wrong!).

The Moon only shows one face to the Earth because it rotates once on its axis every orbit of the Earth due to tidal "locking". en.wikipedia.org...

Just Google "Phases of the Moon" for diagrams and a better explanation than I can give here.

Regarding the astronauts not landing on the far side, they wouldn't be able to communicate with mission control because the Moon would block out any radio signals.

@OBM

Worden is not tight lipped nor is he coached what to say. Your interpretation is dishonest. He is a regular, and popular, public speaker. If you have questions for him I suggest you put some effort in and ask him yourself.

How do you ask an astronaut a question?

Q. What email address or postal address do I need when writing to an astronaut?
A. Because of the extremely high volume of e-mail they would receive if their addresses were public, astronauts' e-mail addresses are restricted. However, you can write them at the following address: NASA/Johnson Space Center
CB/Astronaut Office
Houston, TX 77058

The on-line Q&A page seems to be no longer available:
www.nasa.gov...

I'd like to ask the NASA astronauts what colour the stars were when they looked at them. The Russians saw them as red but were expecting blue. NASA says the Sun would be white viewed from space, even though from it's accepted temperature it should be a pinkish colour. Seen from Earth, the stars can have many colours, and the colour represents their temperatures.

The Russians:

and the Sun looked different—it had no halo and seemed to be welded into black velvet. It was a strange sight.

What colour was it?
Have any NASA astronauts ever commented on how the Sun appears in space?

Some quotes from NASAs Q@A page:

Can You See Stars in Space?
Q. Is it true that in space a person is not able to see stars all around them like we do here on Earth?
A. No, I hear that in space the stars look wonderful, bright (although not twinkling) and very clear. What has probably caused some of this confusion is that in the typical photo or video image from space, there aren't any stars. This is because the stars are much dimmer than the astronaut, Moon, space station, or whatever the image is been taken of. It is extremely hard to get the exposure correct to show the stars. Luckily, the human eye handles the different light levels much better than a camera does.
Dr. Eric Christian (July 2001)

But what colour are they?

Light from Stars
Q. Do stars give off light? If so, how?
A. Stars do give off light, that's why we can see them far away. The Sun, which is just an ordinary star, gives off the light that allows life to exist on Earth. Stars give off light the same way the filament in a light bulb does. Anything that is hot will glow. Cool stars glow red, stars like the Sun glow yellow, and really hot stars glow white or even blue-white.

So our Sun is yellow. I though they said it would be white. I'm confused. Billion$ spent on space exploration and astronomy and astrophysics, but what colour is our Sun, and the stars? Can't we just do the necessary experiments in our own back yard first?

@Hogarth

Stars aren't visible from the Moon when it's illuminated by the Sun. The Apollo astronauts only landed during the "day" when the surface was too bright to make out the stars.

Why Can't We See Stars During the Day?
Q. Why can't we see the stars during the daytime?
A. You can see one star during the day -- the Sun! But because the sky is so bright (due to the Sun being bright), other stars are not visible. On the Moon, if you shield the Sun with your hand and let your eyes dark-adjust, you can see stars during the "day". Dr. Eric Christian (August 2000)

Well, I'm sure Armstrong, and maybe some of the other astronauts knew that, just block the Sun and the stars would be visible, even during the day.

From:
helios.gsfc.nasa.gov...

But, I suppose they never had time to dark adapt, so they couldn't see the stars. But could they see sunspots from the Lunar surface, through their dark visors? 1969 was a sunspot maximum year, but no mention of them, and no images. So many inconsistencies, so many contradicting quotes, just do some scientific experiments NASA, and lets get this sorted out once and for all.

originally posted by: GaryN
@OBM

Worden is not tight lipped nor is he coached what to say. Your interpretation is dishonest. He is a regular, and popular, public speaker. If you have questions for him I suggest you put some effort in and ask him yourself.

How do you ask an astronaut a question?

You go listen to them speak and put your hand up when they ask 'any questions'.

I'd like to ask the NASA astronauts what colour the stars were when they looked at them. The Russians saw them as red but were expecting blue.

All of them were red? Every star? Or just some of them. Sources and context would be cool.

NASA says the Sun would be white viewed from space, even though from it's accepted temperature it should be a pinkish colour. Seen from Earth, the stars can have many colours, and the colour represents their temperatures.

Says who at NASA? What do the ESA say? or JAXA, or ROSCOSMOS? Or maybe all the professional astronomers? Stop assuming NASA are the only people who do space research.

The Russians:

and the Sun looked different—it had no halo and seemed to be welded into black velvet. It was a strange sight.

Which Russians? What colour was the sun?

Have any NASA astronauts ever commented on how the Sun appears in space?

You have internet at your disposal. I would imagine not too many of them looked too hard - the advice in space is the same as on Earth: not a good idea.

Some quotes from NASAs Q@A page:

Can You See Stars in Space?
Q. Is it true that in space a person is not able to see stars all around them like we do here on Earth?
A. No, I hear that in space the stars look wonderful, bright (although not twinkling) and very clear. What has probably caused some of this confusion is that in the typical photo or video image from space, there aren't any stars. This is because the stars are much dimmer than the astronaut, Moon, space station, or whatever the image is been taken of. It is extremely hard to get the exposure correct to show the stars. Luckily, the human eye handles the different light levels much better than a camera does.
Dr. Eric Christian (July 2001)
But what colour are they?

Which ones? There are lots of them. See there how he says you can see stars in space? I see we have moved the goalposts again from ' you can't see stars' to 'why aren't there colours?'.

Light from Stars
Q. Do stars give off light? If so, how?
A. Stars do give off light, that's why we can see them far away. The Sun, which is just an ordinary star, gives off the light that allows life to exist on Earth. Stars give off light the same way the filament in a light bulb does. Anything that is hot will glow. Cool stars glow red, stars like the Sun glow yellow, and really hot stars glow white or even blue-white.


So our Sun is yellow. I though they said it would be white. I'm confused. Billion$ spent on space exploration and astronomy and astrophysics, but what colour is our Sun, and the stars? Can't we just do the necessary experiments in our own back yard first?

Who said it should be white? Where? What colour do you think they should be? Why?

Frankly, if I found you a dozen quotes answering exactly the questions you ask I'd be willing to bet you'd move heaven and earth to find a way not to believe they provided you with what you asked for.

@Hogarth

Stars aren't visible from the Moon when it's illuminated by the Sun. The Apollo astronauts only landed during the "day" when the surface was too bright to make out the stars.

Why Can't We See Stars During the Day?
Q. Why can't we see the stars during the daytime?
A. You can see one star during the day -- the Sun! But because the sky is so bright (due to the Sun being bright), other stars are not visible. On the Moon, if you shield the Sun with your hand and let your eyes dark-adjust, you can see stars during the "day". Dr. Eric Christian (August 2000)
Well, I'm sure Armstrong, and maybe some of the other astronauts knew that, just block the Sun and the stars would be visible, even during the day.

From:
helios.gsfc.nasa.gov...

That's exactly what they tried to do by sheltering in the shadow of the LM. Or they used the optics, which had the same effect. You've been told before how they fixed positions as soon as they landed using stars. They could see them.

But, I suppose they never had time to dark adapt, so they couldn't see the stars.

Finally!

But could they see sunspots from the Lunar surface, through their dark visors? 1969 was a sunspot maximum year, but no mention of them, and no images.

Ooh goodie, new goalposts! Can you see sunspots through dark visors? Do you think they went there to stare at the sun or document the moon?

So many inconsistencies, so many contradicting quotes, just do some scientific experiments NASA, and lets get this sorted out once and for all.

There are no contradicting quotes or inconsistencies, just a stubborn refusal to take into account context, or actually read what was written, and sometimes to misinterpret what was said deliberately.

NASA does look at the stars and the sun. It is very interested in them. That's why it spent money on Hubble, and SOHO, and all the other research programmes specifically looking at these issues.

You can see stars in space.

You can photograph stars in space.

You can see different colours in space.

You can photograph different colours in space.

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: wildespace

You can see stars well above the Earth's atmosphere.

I have illustrated the simple geometry of viewing from the Cupola. All views with the Earth present will be looking through the atmosphere, thinner than the atmosphere we look through when viewing stars from Earth, but the sight-line is much longer, and sufficient to make the stars visible. They have to look directly away from Earth to prove star visibility without an atmosphere,

TA DA



Does the atmosphere stretch that far

a reply to: GaryN



www.esa.int...

Is the Sun pink or yellow in this photo? (if you're concerned about its brightness washing out its true colour, take a look at the ISS surfaces illuminated by the Sun)
Is it located at the Earth's limb so that its light is filtered through our atmosphere?
Is the Sun much dimmer than it appears from ground level?

The answer to all of those questions is "no". The Sun is blindingly white, and is visible in space (just as the stars are, in the right conditions).

@wmd

Does the atmosphere stretch that far?

Good point wmd. I recreated the scene as best I could in Celestia, and with the light levels used in their model, which are using the accepted parameters and supposedly very accurate as far as what the human eye would see from the position of the observer, it seems that the Moon would be very dim from that distance, using what must have been a telescopic lens.
www3.telus.net...
The Chinese seem to be presenting un-doctored images, and the Celestia results would seem to confirm that. So, if we were to have an image of the moon taken from Earth orbit, using the same (about 6degrees) FOV lens, how bright would it be? Pretty dull

So perhaps they don't want to show us the Moon in deep space from the ISS because it would appear to be much smaller and darker than how we see it from Earth, which might raise questions about how we can see the Moon during daylight when the sky is so bright? Again, we need some proper experiments, but NASA is not interested.

wildespace, the Earth in that image is located just out of sight, so yes, the sun is being seen through the earths atmosphere, but is not being filtered by the atmosphere, but created.

The answer to all of those questions is "no". The Sun is blindingly white, and is visible in space (just as the stars are, in the right conditions)

No, that has yet to be proven, and does not match what the crew of Voskhod 2 reported. They didn't mention the colour of the Sun, only that it looked very strange, and that the stars were red/gold. This I believe is why n experiments have ever been done to determine the view of the stars from various altitudes, as the colours will change on the way up if you are looking directly away from the Earth, due to the changes in density and type of gasses in the atmosphere, and the ionisation levels. The Russians were expecting blue stars, perhaps because their previous missions orbits had not taken them to the same altitude as the Voskhod 2, resulting in a different colour of stars being observed.

@OBM

All of them were red? Every star? Or just some of them. Sources and context would be cool.

I guess you didn't read the article at the document Blaine91555 linked to:
www.flightglobal.com...

" But, I suppose they never had time to dark adapt, so they couldn't see the stars." Finally!

I was being facetious. My eyes take 5 seconds to recover and see stars after looking at a very bright light for as long as I could stand it, and while stood on floodlit light grey cement. But science and experiments are not what you are interested in it seems. I'd be happy to accept the results of any verifiable science experiments when it comes to the visibility of objects in space, but you seem to be dead against the spending of the (relatively) paltry sums required to perform such experiments, and that suggests you are suffering from the "cognitive dissonance" condition, you are frightened that the results might conflict with your very strong personal opinions, your mental model, about the nature of light and the visibility conditions in space. Either that, or as Donttrustnasa suggested, you are a NASA shill.

" But could they see sunspots from the Lunar surface, through their dark visors? 1969 was a sunspot maximum year, but no mention of them, and no images." Ooh goodie, new goalposts! Can you see sunspots through dark visors? Do you think they went there to stare at the sun or document the moon?

They took pictures of the Sun, I'd think they would have had to look at it, through their visors of course, to do that, and would have noticed any Sunspots.

As for asking Worden questions, the first one I'd like to ask is to if the light in this image was from Sunlight or from the EVA floodlight. They should have been in full sun during his EVA, so he wouldn't have been able to see the stars due to his pupils having contracted, you'd say, but that looks like floodlight and not sunlight to me. Worden should easily be able to answer that question.
www.hq.nasa.gov...
And what did the Sun look like from cislunar space? Be interesting to compare the appearance of the Sun from outside of the atmosphere with that of the view from Earth orbit as described by the Voskhod 2 crew, and against descriptions by NASA astronauts from the Gemini era on their EVAs, and the ISS EVA astronauts too. Did Worden describe how the Sun looked while on his EVA? I don't find anything yet.

originally posted by: onebigmonkey
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

C&P.

GIYF.

Is that some kind of secret code? Come on, why not tell us what GIYF stands for?

We are adding this Borman to the Apollo narrative and there is nothing that you can do about it.

Thursday and Friday, July 24-25, 1969
We crossed the dateline so one day covers two. This is the day men came back from the moon. After a sleepless night on the Arlington for me (my cabin was next to the radio shack and a banging door) we were up at 4:00 for 4:40 departure. It was beautiful on the flight deck, absolutely dark, millions of stars, plus the antenna lights on the ship.

Borman said it looked more like the sky on the back side of the moon than any he had ever seen on earth.

Source H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, p.75

Borman's on the flight deck, 4:40 in the morning, pre-dawn, and tells Haldeman what he saw. Haldeman writes it in his diary.

This is now part of the official narrative.

originally posted by: GaryN
"We had been accustomed to see stars as blue; but we there saw them as of pure gold—they seemed to have been scattered on black velvet by a careless hand.
Leonov: They looked really bright, in fact almost red like pure gold."

All the stars were red/gold? I see quite a variety of colours out there, wonder why they were all red/gold? Good job OBM is here to answer that question, he knows everything!

Who cares what he thinks? We can't let ATS be patrolled by bullies!

a reply to: GaryN
Well, the Moon is darker and smaller than the Earth, and it does appear so in all space photos unless a telephoto lens and somewhat longer exposure was used.



Moon shots from the ISS looking straight up have been taken, you should remember this being discussed in this very thread. The photos were taken through the zenith port in Node 2 "Harmony". You seem to have a firmly-entrenched ability to ignore or "forget" the evidence presented contrary to your statements.

We can indeed see the Moon in the blue daytime sky, but is it any brighter than the sunlit asphalt?

As for the Leonov's impression about the Sun, it's understandable, as it does appear different than from Earth - without the atmospheric glare (or "halo" as they described it), and much whiter and harsher. Note that they didn't describe it as much dimmer, which it should've been according to your theory. Again, you're just moving goalposts from "they can't see stars or the Sun from up there" to "the stars and the Sun appear different."

Regarding all the stars looking red or golden, as remarked by Leonov, I'm positive it was some subjective impression, as no other cosmonaut or astronaut made a similar remark that I know of. Colours can sometimes be a very subjective experience, depending on what kind of light was entering your eyes previously, and perhaps some other factors (for example, when Apollo astronauts saw the Moon as golden brown during a flyover)

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
We are adding this Borman to the Apollo narrative and there is nothing that you can do about it.

Thursday and Friday, July 24-25, 1969
We crossed the dateline so one day covers two. This is the day men came back from the moon. After a sleepless night on the Arlington for me (my cabin was next to the radio shack and a banging door) we were up at 4:00 for 4:40 departure. It was beautiful on the flight deck, absolutely dark, millions of stars, plus the antenna lights on the ship.

Borman said it looked more like the sky on the back side of the moon than any he had ever seen on earth.

Source H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, p.75

What is the significance of this quote, in your opinion? All I see here is that he got to be under a very dark sky (no light pollution) and saw a huge multitude of stars, like he did on the "back side of the moon" which I interpret to be the night side of the Moon. Which only proves that without the atmosphere (and being in darkness), one will see lots more stars than we usually see from Earth.

I Googled "Apollo + Borman + stars" and found this article with more evidence that they saw stars up there:

Anders said they were in darkness as they were, "just starting to go around, behind the moon, still in contact with the Earth, but in the shadow of not only the sun but also Earth shine, Earth shine being six times brighter than moon shine."

It was at that time Anders looked out of his window and, "saw all these stars, more stars than you could pick out constellations from"

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

congratulations - you have just demolished ATS user " GARYNs " argument " - so stars are visible from space

a reply to: cooperton

Why not keep it simple....

Light enters the eye and onto your retina...thats how our brain registers we are seeing something. Star light is traveling through space and if you are in space your eye will catch that light. What is wrong in this way of thinking?

a reply to: wildespace

Moon shots from the ISS looking straight up have been taken, you should remember this being discussed in this very thread. The photos were taken through the zenith port in Node 2 "Harmony".

There is no porthole window in the zenith port in Node 2 "Harmony". There are no uncovered portholes looking into deep space.

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: wildespace

Moon shots from the ISS looking straight up have been taken, you should remember this being discussed in this very thread. The photos were taken through the zenith port in Node 2 "Harmony".

There is no porthole window in the zenith port in Node 2 "Harmony". There are no uncovered portholes looking into deep space.

And that's after all the images and information I presented to you? The porthole in question is part of the zenith docking port on Node 2. It can be uncovered to look through it or to take pictures. Which has been done as part of the experiment to photograph the Moon.

I'm gonna post the relevant video again: www.youtube.com...


Are you saying NASA and other space agencies, along with any engineers, contractors, and researchers that are working with them, are making it all up, supposedly to keep us from knowing that you can't see any light in deep space? You have some bizarre ideas.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

The fact that Borman orbited the moon and saw stars there has always been part of the official narrative.

It doesn't need you to pronounce it from the town hall steps to make it official.

a reply to: wildespace

And that's after all the images and information I presented to you? The porthole in question is part of the zenith docking port on Node 2. It can be uncovered to look through it or to take pictures. Which has been done as part of the experiment to photograph the Moon.

The image in that video is NOT from a zenith porthole, you would not see any part of the space station if there was a porthole to look out of. The Earth is just out of sight below the space station.
Find me any reference to there being a window in the zenith port hatch, and then show me the image that was supposedly taken through it.

You have some bizarre ideas.

Well, I just don't drink of the NASA Kool-Aid, that stuff will rot your mind. And I don't drink alcohol either, just in case you were going to respond that I must be drunk! 8)

Amazingly, NASA aren't the only only people in space. In fact, very few people from NASA are.

Have some nice ISS Moon pictures

www.notey.com... from-orbit-atv5.html

orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.co.uk...

spaceref.com...