Of course there are stars!

Hi All
There are lots of threads on here re NASA the Moon landings and no stars well here is a link to a site which has some nice examples of pictures taken from the shuttle and from/in the ISS.

www.luminous-landscape.com...

Now one picture is very interesting it shows the Earth and the Milky Way in the background.



Details of the exposure are shown below the picture on the site.

Milky Way from Discovery Flight Deck. Nikon D3s, 14-24 f/2.8 @ 24, ISO 9000, 4 sec, f/2.8

They are using a 14-24mm zoom lens with a max aperture of f2.8 focal length set to 24mm

So what you have is a lens wide open to let the maximum amount of light in aperture f2.8!!!
Shutter left open for 4 seconds!!!
With the iso (film speed) of 9000!!!!

You can see the lights on the earth below are streaks due to the long exposure time of 4 seconds.

Now to give you an idea typical Moon shots can be taken at f8
Shutter 1/250 of a second
iso of 100.

If you want to find out more re aperture and shutter speeds look here.

www.facethelight.com...

To give all none photographrer types an idea of what that means.

On a lens the aperture would be from f2.8, then f4 f5.6 f8 each step lets in HALF the amount of light from the previous one.

Shutter speeds from 1/250 then 1/125 1/60 1/30/ 1/15 1/8 1/4 1/2 1 sec 2 sec 4 sec for this each step lets DOUBLE the amount of light hit the sensor/film.

ISO (film speed) from 100 then 200 400 800 1600 3200 6400 the 9000 setting halfway between the next which would be 12800. 200 is TWICE as sensitive as 100, 400 TWICE 200 etc etc.

Here is another picture with no stars



Exposure details

Nikon D3s, ISO 200, 1/1000, f/2.8

Fast aperture f2.8, fast shutter speed 1/1000th of a second iso 200 NO stars.

That shows the VAST difference in light levels between the Moon and stars, so you think stars should show up on Apollo moon surface pictures , WELL think again

We know there are stars, i see them every nght.

Isnt it to do with the glare of the moon why they arent visible in the pics?

Originally posted by AmberLeaf
We know there are stars, i see them every nght.

Isnt it to do with the glare of the moon why they arent visible in the pics?

No as you can see from the examples above its all to do with exposure settings!

reply to post by wmd_2008


Thank you for the wonderful and informative post.
I love seeing the stars shown from space in these pictures.

reply to post by wmd_2008


I appreciate your post, OP, and fully agree with it.

Sad fact is that it will never convince the deniers. They would rather look at (and believe) a YouTube video that tells them that man has never been to the moon. Your post on the other hand requires them to THINK, and that is too difficult. Rather believe what is on YouTube....


Nowadays I pick my fights. I have learnt that no matter what you do and prove, you can never convince some people otherwise.

Originally posted by wmd_2008

Originally posted by AmberLeaf
We know there are stars, i see them every nght.

Isnt it to do with the glare of the moon why they arent visible in the pics?

No as you can see from the examples above its all to do with exposure settings!

I could be wrong, but I thought it was "sometimes both"...

...What I mean is that it is certainly a function of the moon being so bright that the camera settings used on the Moon to take the pictures we see of the Apollo astronauts included an exposure time that was too fast for stars to be visible (just like your home camera, set to "daytime" exposure, would not be able to photograph stars at night).

(I could be wrong about this second part, but...)...HOWEVER, I also thought that the astronauts themselves could not see stars while their eyes were acclimated to the brightness of the moon. They could see stars (theoretically) if they looked straight up, away from the brightness of the surface, and let their eyes adjust to the darkness.

Good post. We've been trying to explain this to the believers many times. I have even personally suggested that if they do not believe me they can go outside and try it out for themselves. Noone has taken up the offer yet.

I'd like to see an image similar to this, taken from the ISS. Has anyone ever seen an image of Mars, or Venus, or a conjunction taken from the ISS, or past Shuttle missions?
www.flickr.com...
I have an old Nikon Coolpix and here is the kind of image it can take. Where is a shot like that from the ISS?
You only ever see stars, or the Moon, when there is a crescent Earth in view.
www.stargazing.net...

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by wmd_2008

Originally posted by AmberLeaf
We know there are stars, i see them every nght.

Isnt it to do with the glare of the moon why they arent visible in the pics?

No as you can see from the examples above its all to do with exposure settings!

I could be wrong, but I thought it was "sometimes both"...

...What I mean is that it is certainly a function of the moon being so bright that the camera settings used on the Moon to take the pictures we see of the Apollo astronauts included an exposure time that was too fast for stars to be visible (just like your home camera, set to "daytime" exposure, would not be able to photograph stars at night).

(I could be wrong about this second part, but...)...HOWEVER, I also thought that the astronauts themselves could not see stars while their eyes were acclimated to the brightness of the moon. They could see stars (theoretically) if they looked straight up, away from the brightness of the surface, and let their eyes adjust to the darkness.

Look at what he said above underlined GLARE had nothing to do with stars not showing in the pictures!

Originally posted by GaryN
I'd like to see an image similar to this, taken from the ISS. Has anyone ever seen an image of Mars, or Venus, or a conjunction taken from the ISS, or past Shuttle missions?
www.flickr.com...
I have an old Nikon Coolpix and here is the kind of image it can take. Where is a shot like that from the ISS?
You only ever see stars, or the Moon, when there is a crescent Earth in view.
www.stargazing.net...

Here from your own link exposure details

DSCN7756.JPG
CAMERA : E990V1.1
METERING : CENTER
MODE : M
SHUTTER : 4.00sec
APERTURE : F2.5
EXP +/- : 0.0
FOCAL LENGTH : f8.2mm(X1.0)
IMG ADJUST : STANDARD
SENSITIVITY : ISO100

4 secs so OVEREXPOSED Moon only 100 asa so ONLY very bright stars show.

You have the advantage of looking up with NO restrictions ie not looking out of a window!
Oh and your not in a vehicle traveling at 5 miles per second either.

Originally posted by GaryN
You only ever see stars, or the Moon, when there is a crescent Earth in view.

Wrong.
messier.seds.org...
messier.seds.org...
messier.seds.org...

Here is a video showing some still images taken from the ISS. If you listen, you will hear the astronaut say that the ISS had been in an inertial orbit for 6 weeks or so, meaning that the stars would appear stationary, allowing for long time exposures without blurring. It also has to be pointed out too, that the Earth in these images, if you do some research, can be shown to be just out of shot, meaning that these stars are visible because the line of sight to those stars from the ISS is through Earths ionosphere.
www.youtube.com...

You will never, ever see an image like www.flickr.com... from the ISS, or anywhere in space. I have challenged NASA to provide such, I don't get an answer. Go ahead and tell me they don't have time or aren't interested, that is the usual response, but if you believe in over 40 years of manned space flight, and with the best cameras and lenses, nobody ever wanted to photograph the Moon, you really need to give your head a shake.
Also, can you explain why the 'lit' side of the Moon appears to be much bigger than the Earthshine side in that image?

Originally posted by GaryN
Also, can you explain why the 'lit' side of the Moon appears to be much bigger than the Earthshine side in that image?

The moon is OVEREXPOSED thats why, that's why the earthshine part of the Moon shows as well

As for the long exposure the link in the OP shows a 4 sec exposure which at f2.8 and iso 9000 was good enough for this result.



From the ISS The Moon as requested!

Originally posted by ngchunter

Originally posted by GaryN
You only ever see stars, or the Moon, when there is a crescent Earth in view.

Wrong.
messier.seds.org...
messier.seds.org...
messier.seds.org...

What? No response? Shocked, shocked I say!

Originally posted by GaryN
It also has to be pointed out too, that the Earth in these images, if you do some research, can be shown to be just out of shot, meaning that these stars are visible because the line of sight to those stars from the ISS is through Earths ionosphere.

Oh, you're that ionosphere ct'er. Here you go:
www.skyandtelescope.com...
Oh look, stars and galaxies recorded from far beyond earth orbit or any other planet by a deep space probe. No ionosphere, yet the stars are perfectly visible. Stars being visible has NOTHING to do with the ionosphere. You are wrong, and there you go, now you're proven to be wrong.
media.skyandtelescope.com...

Well, looks like you guys really know your stuff. Thanks for those replies. So I'm in the right place to ask another couple of questions that have puzzled me lately.
Image ISS006-E-28069. What is going on here, why does Canopus seem to have moved around like crazy, but the other stars didn't?
eol.jsc.nasa.gov...
This one shows stars above the Earth. Or does it? How come there are what look like stars in front of the Earth?
spaceflight.nasa.gov...

Oh, you're that ionosphere ct'er.

'Tis I indeed!

NASA and ESA and others take the data from those instruments in space and turn it into something our eyes/consciousness can make sense of. These instruments are not regular cameras, and most of what they detect is not withing the range of what our eyes can see. It is all false colour. If you were out where that instrument was in space, you would see nothing. Even the light that they say is 'white' is most likely the spectra of the de-ionisation of charged elements such as hydrogen, or helium, or maybe neon. How many colours does Hubble see?
Here are a couple of links to articles about the instruments and how the pretty pictures we see are obtained.
Truth Behind the Photos: What the Hubble Space Telescope Really Sees
www.space.com...
What do Dawn's color ratio images of Vesta mean?
planetary.org...
Just because super-sensitive, ultra high tech, multi-million dollar instruments, and sometimes weeks of processing on a supercomputer can show you some pretty pictures, does not mean you will see anything at all with your eyes. They are all but useless in space.

Originally posted by GaryN
NASA and ESA and others take the data from those instruments in space and turn it into something our eyes/consciousness can make sense of. These instruments are not regular cameras, and most of what they detect is not withing the range of what our eyes can see.

Wrong. It's a regular CCD. The CCD was a visible light CCD with a resolution of 1024x1024 and 21 micron pixels made by Fairchild Imaging (ID CCD424). You want one? You can buy one for yourself:
www.fairchildimaging.com...

It is all false colour.

Wrong. It's monochrome, it's not false color.

If you were out where that instrument was in space, you would see nothing.

Completely and totally wrong Gary. It's a visible light CCD, quantum efficiency is 0.7, it's not even all that high as CCD's go. There is nothing about that CCD that would enable it to see stars when a regular camera could not. You are completely and totally wrong and now you have been disproven. More images from EPOXI's VISIBLE LIGHT CCD:
epoxi.umd.edu...
epoxi.umd.edu...

Truth Behind the Photos: What the Hubble Space Telescope Really Sees

THIS IS NOT THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE!

Hi ngchunter,
It's good you have taken the time to look into the science and technology involved, but there are aspects you have not considered. Firstly, the CCD is capable of imaging between 300 and 900 nm, which means it can see into both the IR and UV, which your eyes can not. They used a 'clear' filter, which means they were 'wide open', collecting all photons within the range of the CCD, so they do not know what wavelengths were being detected. Secondly, the exposure times. In this case I found those images used 7 to 10 stacked images of 17 minutes each. Add to that the on-chip electron amplifiers, in effect photo-multipliers. The CCD may only have picked up one or two photons per pixel, and that would still be considered a 1, if you want to think of the CCD in digital, 0 or 1 terms. Your eye can not store photons though, rather it needs so many photons per second for your brain to be able to say it 'saw' something. How many photons/sec is itself a contentious issue.
So, what is being detected is not determined, but likely it is Balmer emissions of ionised hydrogen, hydrogen being the most common element out there.
en.wikipedia.org...

Wrong. It's monochrome, it's not false color.

Well if they used no filters, then the colour is arbitrary, all you have is a 'greyscale', depending on the number of 'hits' to each pixel. Filters of course would reduce the number of photons reaching the CCD, so much longer exposures would have been required. Then of course is the post-processing by computer. Some images require weeks of processing by racks of computers to produce some of the images we see.

THIS IS NOT THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE!

Very true, but the same principles apply to nearly all space based imagers, except that they choose the optics and filters to suit the nature of the observations.
A limited edition of "Handbook of CCD Astronomy" by Steve Howell is accessible from books.google.com.pe... for anyone wishing to take the time to peruse.

OK, you proved your point about the stars but that still doe not explain why the moon landing photos were ran though Photoshop (or what ever theyhad back then).

Originally posted by GaryN
Hi ngchunter,
It's good you have taken the time to look into the science and technology involved, but there are aspects you have not considered. Firstly, the CCD is capable of imaging between 300 and 900 nm, which means it can see into both the IR and UV, which your eyes can not.

So can almost any CCD you can buy. In fact, the images in this case were recorded through a number of filters (though each monochrome image is from a single filter, NOT FALSE COLOR). A number of those filters are entirely in visible light, NOT infrared and NOT UV!

They used a 'clear' filter, which means they were 'wide open', collecting all photons within the range of the CCD,

Not true. They used a number of filters, most of which were in visible light and were not "clear" or "wide open." You can get each of the images for yourself:
epoxi.umd.edu...

In this case I found those images used 7 to 10 stacked images of 17 minutes each.

That is no different than similar images taken from earth. Deep space astrophotography like this also requires long exposure times, particularly for CCDs like this that only have 70% QE.

Well if they used no filters,

That is not what I said. Quote me where I said they used no filters or retract the claim. They are monochrome images though, not false color.

Very true, but the same principles apply to nearly all space based imagers, except that they choose the optics and filters to suit the nature of the observations.
A limited edition of "Handbook of CCD Astronomy" by Steve Howell is accessible from books.google.com.pe... for anyone wishing to take the time to peruse.

I know very well how deep space astrophotography works, I've been doing it for 12 years!!!!!