There are no stars... but

Hello,

Surely there would have been celestial objects some orders of magnitude greater than the over exposure caused by the suns reflection of the surface of the moon?, such as when Venus is seen here during the day?

You would have thought NASA would have thought about that and maybe brought a camera capable of taking shots of the stars, what with it being a once in a lifetime sort of thing.

Originally posted by Deaf Alien
If the moon astronauts pointed their cameras at the sky (remember no atmosphere), wouldn't the camera be able to capture the stars despite them being in the daytime on the moon?

Yes, if none of the Moon's bright surface was in the frame.
But the stars are visible from Earth. The surface of the Moon was of much greater interest.

reply to post by Phage


Really?, what observational satellites were in orbit at the time conducting stellar research?

You would have thought NASA would have taken the opportunity to take some nice snaps of our observable universe without an atmosphere in the way. But then i suppose time was of the essence, that back nine wasnt going play itself!

reply to post by Ixtab

A snapshot of stars from the Moon's surface? Why? It wouldn't look much different from one taken on Earth. A handheld snapshot doesn't really provide a very good image of the stars on Earth or on the Moon. The stars wouldn't be noticeably different and without any foreground the doubters would just claim it was taken on Earth anyway.

Some science was done though. Apollo 16 did carry an ultraviolet camera which was used to get stellar images from the Moon's surface. It was positioned in the shadow of the LM.
www.myspacemuseum.com...

reply to post by Phage


Ta for the link, will give it a read.

But seeing conditions on account of Earths atmosphere can have a multitude of ill affects on astronomical observation, NASA would have been very much aware of this.

en.wikipedia.org...

Not so much of an issue now, but still.

The main reason stars were not seen from the Moon, or are not seen much from the ISS, is the exposure times are too short. Yes, you can easily see the stars from Earth at night. I can look at my bright porch light, then look up to the stars and see quite a lot. With my digital camera I need at least 10 seconds to get some pin pricks of stars, 15 to 20 seconds preferably. Our eyes are remarkable devices. So on the moon, they never used long time exposures, apart from the FUV camera, so even with a fast film it is unlikely they would have seen stars. I don't know why they wouldn't have tried some time exposures from the shadow of the LM with their Hasselblads , too late now though.
You can not take a video of the stars with your video camera either, give it a try. There is a way to see them in real time though, using a night vision device like the Binocular Photon Machine, or the Yukon Ranger. Not cheap, but I'd buy the BIPH if I had the money to spare. They see infrared, which most cameras can not see, as they have an IR blocking coating on the lens.
Here are some stars. From the blurring of the lights on earth, this must be a few seconds of exposure. The cargo bay is not badly overexposed though, which says a lot about the dynamic range of the camera, mostly Nikon F3s I think.
Shuttle and Stars.
However, the puzzle to me is why there are no images of the Sun taken from the ISS, using a solar filter, one that would show sunspots. No need for long exposures there. All the experiments from the ISS looking at the Sun use instruments that are not cameras. Lots of very clever scientific instruments, but nothing from a regular camera with a filter. Can it be done? Why bother, I hear, when SOHO can take pictures of the Sun? Well, it doesn't use regular cameras either, and I just want to see an image of the Sun looking anything like I can take with my old camera and some mylar film or an old welding goggle lens. Surely it couldn't break the budget or interfere with their busy schedules too much? There are some mysteries and inconsistencies with what NASA tells us, but light and human vision are very complex issues, so it's difficult to say exactly what is going on. Of course the ISS is basically a military project, so we might never know the full story.