Of course there are stars!

reply to post by GaryN

There are viewports on the ISS which face sideway (as I mentioned before), giving a wider view of space.



The Cupola has windows that are also not facing the Earth directly, but almost sideways.

news.softpedia.com...
boingboing.net...

jonnywhite

A previous commenter posted this and it shows some apollo pictures which include stars/planets:
onebigmonkey.comoj.com...

Has anybody verified those images using planetarium software somehow?

edit on 14-1-2014 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Yes, me, using planetarium software. Check my username and compare it with the web address

GaryN
One day someone will get a video camera into space and try taking some footage of the Moon, and then it will be game over. If I had any money, I'd bet on it.

Erm, they've been doing this since the 1960s. I'll take your money.

reply to post by wildespace

That looks like a Zvezda Service Module window. Zvezda has 13 windoes in total, never heard about a view of the stars from them. The crew have a window in their sleeping cubicles, what a view they must have, in the darkness. A spiritual awakening perhaps, on realising the Majesty of His works. But then I guess they'd have to get up every 90 minutes to throw the blinds so the ferocious heat of the Sun disn't flood in and bake them and overheat the service module. That must be why they don't have windows facing deep space.

www.nasa.gov...

The Cupola has windows that are also not facing the Earth directly, but almost sideways.

The field of view of the cupola windows was very carefully calculated, and the angle of view is still mostly through Earths atmosphere. Those side windows are often covered up, from the outside, needing an EVA to uncover them.

eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov...

”When looking out a sideward facing window, you can see the horizon of the Earth against the black background of space.”

Here's is a page with some images about robots building houses on the Moon. If you are lucky, and fully dark adapted, this might be about as many stars as you are going to see from up there, though I think not even that. No Milky way, colourful clouds of stars, galaxies, clusters, planet rings. Space will be DULL!
(I give up, I can't even link to a web page now, take out the spaces)

h t t p://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2539857/How-3D-printing-help-colonise-moon-Contour-Crafting-technique-build-lunar-bases-astronauts-just-24 -hours.html

@onebigmonkey

Erm, they've been doing this since the 1960s. I'll take your money.

Where??

(and is there a simple way to insert the images into these posts?)

reply to post by GaryN


Why are stars BRIGHTER at higher altitudes and using your LOGIC that a thicker atmosphere is better the Dead Sea would have a concentration of telescopes around its shores!!!!

onebigmonkey

jonnywhite

A previous commenter posted this and it shows some apollo pictures which include stars/planets:
onebigmonkey.comoj.com...

Has anybody verified those images using planetarium software somehow?

edit on 14-1-2014 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Yes, me, using planetarium software. Check my username and compare it with the web address

Actually this is worth expanding on. I used Stellarium to verify what I was seeing, which is free and allows you, up to a point, to position yourself in time and space to see what should be visible.

In truth, all you can do with constellations is verify that they are there - it doesn't really matter where you are, they will always look pretty much the same. What you can do is say whether or not they would have been visible from the point of the observer - ie, not hidden behind the moon. For the solar corona photographs, for example, I positioned the observer to be where the lunar terminator would be at the sunrise. I checked the time of the photographs and it turns out that the terminator was exactly where it should be and the correct stellar objects were visible where they should be.

The real giveaway are the planets, as their position is pretty much unique. Given the difference in orbits, say, of Jupiter and Venus will be unique for any given time. I was able to confirm that the picture of Venus, Mars and Saturn taken by Apollo 16 on the way home from the moon must have been taken at the time the photography experiment was taking place, because you wouldn't have those 3 in that configuration at any other time.

Likewise the images of Jupiter in Apollo 17's solar corona photographs. Finding it in 3 separate photographs was one thing, finding that its movement over the 51 hours separating the images was consistent with what Stellarium says it should have moved, and that it was in the correct place, is pretty special. NASA might have picked out Jupiter (Gene Cernan certainly did), but they didn't spot what I've found. Go me

@GaryN:

Surveyor 3 sent TV pictures back from the moon. Apollo 8 and 10 broadcast live TV from lunar orbit. All the Apollo missions took 16mm video of the moon from orbit, often on the lunar side - the side you think should be invisible to cameras. Both Societ and US pre-Apollo probes also took photographs of the lunar far side. Referring back to your post from 15 months ago, the moon is not a great UV source, and the lack of atmosphere means that it does not retain heat for long and would therefore not be much use in infra-red, except when it's hot, which is when the sun shines on it. In order to look at the moon in different spectra, there has to be light reflecting from it - sunlight.

GaryN
reply to post by wildespace

 

That looks like a Zvezda Service Module window.

It's the Japanese "Kibo" module, which has 2 large sideways-facing windows. www.space.com...

Zvezda has 13 windoes in total, never heard about a view of the stars from them. The crew have a window in their sleeping cubicles, what a view they must have, in the darkness. A spiritual awakening perhaps, on realising the Majesty of His works.

The crew compartments in Zvezda indeed have sideways-facing windows, and Anousheh Ansari's account of seeing stars (like diamond dust spread over black velvet) comes from when she was looking through one of the side windows when the ISS was over the Earth's night side. spaceblog.xprize.org...

From the side windows in the little cabins and the docking compartment, where I sleep, you see the complete curvature of the Earth against the dark background of the universe. This view is actually my favorite because you see the “Whole” not the “Parts.” [...] The best part and by far my favorite view up here is the view of the universe at night. The stars up here are unbelievable… It looks like someone has spread diamond dust over a black velvet blanket. The Milky Way is easily visible… like a rainbow of stars over the entire earth…

This account has of course already been mentioned in this thread, but you conveniently ignore it. Or could it be that the space agencies have instructed Anousheh, "look, you can't really see anything in space, unless it's directly over the Earth's limb, but we have this global conspiracy going on that you can, so could you please post bogus experiences in your blog so that the rest of the world continues believing you can see stars in space." Eh?

The field of view of the cupola windows was very carefully calculated, and the angle of view is still mostly through Earths atmosphere. Those side windows are often covered up, from the outside, needing an EVA to uncover them.

Nope, there's no need for an EVA to uncover them, it's done by remote control (not sure if it's done from mission control or the ISS itself). The Cupola allows viewing celestial bodies above the Earth's limb.

Something I'd like you to clarify, by the way: how do you define where the Earth's atmosphere (or the Earth's limb) ends and space begins? From the position of the ISS, how many degrees above the horizon do you have to extend to not look through the atmosphere anymore? I was under the impression that the ISS orbits above the atmosphere, and that unless you're looking directly at Earth or Earth's limb, you're looking at space.

Here's is a page with some images about robots building houses on the Moon. If you are lucky, and fully dark adapted, this might be about as many stars as you are going to see from up there, though I think not even that. No Milky way, colourful clouds of stars, galaxies, clusters, planet rings. Space will be DULL!

That's just your speculation, based on an artist's impression, which wasn't supposed to be scientifically accurate (artists and film-makers just stick the starry background on every space shot regardless) and is inaccurate anyway as it depicts the sunlit landscape. Human vision isn't that great in low-light; we can't see colourful nebulae and galaxies like the Hubble images show us. On the night side of the Moon, we'd see the same diamond dust on black velvet that Anousheh described.

Update on the Cupola and what we can see in space:

ISS astronaut Don Pettit opened the shutters on the cupola observation windows to witness a Moon rise from Space. Time-lapse video captured from the airlock of the Russian segment of the Space Station.

Notice that both the camera that shot this footage, and the astronaut in the Cupola (who was the one who opened the window shutters, by the way) are facing sideways, not towards Earth.

With regards to my earlier question about how far above Earth's limb it has to be before it stops being "the atmosphere" and starts being "space": notice the Moon rising relatively high above the limb, and not diminishing in brightness. Will it just wink out of view once it reaches "space"?

Some good questions guys, and I think I have decent answers, but no time today, but, this is the kind of test I'd like to see from an ISS EVA, using a cheap, consumer level video camera. Looking away from the Earth, with an identical camera, could the same test be performed? Comparing the Earth based shot, with an EVA shot, would there be any difference? Comparative analysis I think this would be called, solid, simple science, but I havent seen it tried. The suggestion of such a test brings only contempt from NASA, "Well, why would we want to do that, we can see the Moon perfecly well from Earth!"
That response does not satisfy my curiosity, or suspicions.


Why doesn't that video display?? The link:
www.youtube.com...

GaryN
Why doesn't that video display??

For embedding Youtube videos, copy&paste only the last part of the url, after "v=". In this case, it's -mL3OSr3ljA

From what I've seen of EVAs, they use cameras adapted for vacuum and covered in white material (to prevent overheating, I guess). I don't think they can just take any old camera or camcorder out there. Also, the EVA schedule is very tight and busy, so they'd have to justify the time for taking Moon shots like you described.

reply to post by wildespace


Sorry, busy again today, so these replies haven't been attributed to the original poster, but I'm sure you know who you are.

From what I've seen of EVAs, they use cameras adapted for vacuum and covered in white material (to prevent overheating, I guess). I don't think they can just take any old camera or camcorder out there. Also, the EVA schedule is very tight and busy, so they'd have to justify the time for taking Moon shots like you described.

They took some pretty well standard, unprotected cameras out on the Lunar surface, they worked pretty well it seems, and the film didn't show signs of either overheating or much radiation. Make all the excuses you like for NASA, but even if it's too nasty an environment around the ISS to take out a camera, they have 4 video cameras on Canadarm2, and all the astronauts have helmet cams, which offer an unbelievably bad image and signals that drop out for long periods at a time. Wheres the crystal clear HD we should expect from modern cameras? The Chinese sent some HD from their EVA. I can only find one still image from a Canadarm video camera, no footage. The Canadarm cameras can be pointed in any direction, point one at the Moon, an easy, cheap and quick test of some very basic science.

Why are stars BRIGHTER at higher altitudes and using your LOGIC that a thicker atmosphere is better the Dead Sea would have a concentration of telescopes around its shores!!!!

Good question, but at lower elevations the light is progressively blocked by particle in the atmosphere. They are larger than the wavelength of visible light, whereas individual atoms as in the ionosphere are too small to block light, but will cause secondary emissions, causing the light and heat that supposedly actually come from the Sun. The stars do get brighter up to a certain altitude, and at 47,000 ft, a regular, old, unprotected Nikon can capture these types of image, including the Milky Way and Haleys Comet. So from space, they should be even brighter and more numerous, and even easier to image, but I've seen nothing like them from space.
However, you bring up a good point, as If I can ever get my balloon-top, upwards facing camera experiment off the ground, then a night launch from Death Valley would be sensible, to measure the star visibility from as low as possible, and up to hopefully about 90,000 ft.

www.musc.edu...

Referring back to your post from 15 months ago, the moon is not a great UV source,

But it IS a good UV source, as shown from Apollo 17 on its way back to Earth. They call this UV (colour), the IIa-O film, in the original description. Once you are away from the Moon, the light intensity progressively drops, but UV light has much more energy and can be detected further out. Beyond a certain distance though, even this UV light can only be captured spectrographically. The bright white Moon is, in my model, the result of this UV from the Lunar surface reaching us by the energy of the Vacuum UV soliton 'beams', which interact with our atmosphere, giving off the white, transvers waves that our eyes need.
(won't link, remove spaces again)
w w w.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2001/07/view_of_the_moon_seen_apollo_17/9215843-5-eng-GB/View_of_the_Moon_seen_Apollo_17_node_f ull_image.jpg
And there are lots of UV images of the Moon fro various craft. IR has been a little more difficult, and in thermal IR it was only a few years ago that the Moon was imaged.
upload.wikimedia.org...

Surveyor 3 sent TV pictures back from the moon.

Well sure, close to the surface there is light of the transverse type as we might call it. Not debating that, though the light levels are generally so low that the cameras struggled with getting colour.

In order to look at the moon in different spectra, there has to be light reflecting from it - sunlight.

But strange why no spectral values are available for the Moon. The SOLAR/SOLSPEC package on the ISS looks at Solar spectra, down to a 1 nm resolution, but has never looked at the Moon.

But that is not the best part. The best part and by far my favorite view up here is the view of the universe at night. The stars up here are unbelievable… It looks like someone has spread diamond dust over a black velvet blanket. The Milky Way is easily visible… like a rainbow of stars over the entire earth…

Yes, even looking sideways the Earth rim is still in view, and we know that the stars are visible 'over the Earth" as she says. Lots of images in that region, it is still not deep space. An EVA test is needed again.

With regards to my earlier question about how far above Earth's limb it has to be before it stops being "the atmosphere" and starts being "space": notice the Moon rising relatively high above the limb, and not diminishing in brightness. Will it just wink out of view once it reaches "space"?

Using the radius of the Earth from that vid, you can calculate the depth to which the Moon rose, and it is still well within what we consider the atmosphere, which includes the ionosphere. How far away from the Earth the visibility will remain good is not known, as they can not track the Moon around into deep space. Only from an EVA could you determine that. Or it should be no problem to 'track' the Canadarm to follow the Moon. And yes, I believe it will wink out, but from what I have been able to find from images from the shuttles, it will become light brown, then a reddish-brown, dark brown, and then yes, it will fade out. That would be a neat experiment I'd say, let's try it!

Here is a graph of the ionosphere and temperature profile up to 1000 kM or so. Looks like the ISS may be in a denser ion layer.

utd500.utdallas.edu...

1:08:00 of this video:

Far away from the atmosphere of the earth, Al Worden saw so many stars he couldn't even recognize his constellations anymore! I'm going to be meeting this guy next weekend.

GaryN

They took some pretty well standard, unprotected cameras out on the Lunar surface, they worked pretty well it seems, and the film didn't show signs of either overheating or much radiation.

No - the Hasselblad cameras were modified to minimise the amount of lubrication needed and were designed to cope with temperature fluctuations.

Make all the excuses you like for NASA, but even if it's too nasty an environment around the ISS to take out a camera, they have 4 video cameras on Canadarm2, and all the astronauts have helmet cams, which offer an unbelievably bad image and signals that drop out for long periods at a time. Wheres the crystal clear HD we should expect from modern cameras? The Chinese sent some HD from their EVA. I can only find one still image from a Canadarm video camera, no footage. The Canadarm cameras can be pointed in any direction, point one at the Moon, an easy, cheap and quick test of some very basic science.

So basic it isn't necessary. It's not even science.

Good question, but at lower elevations the light is progressively blocked by particle in the atmosphere. They are larger than the wavelength of visible light, whereas individual atoms as in the ionosphere are too small to block light, but will cause secondary emissions, causing the light and heat that supposedly actually come from the Sun. The stars do get brighter up to a certain altitude, and at 47,000 ft, a regular, old, unprotected Nikon can capture these types of image, including the Milky Way and Haleys Comet. So from space, they should be even brighter and more numerous, and even easier to image, but I've seen nothing like them from space.

Have you any idea what is required to get a picture of the milky way?

But it IS a good UV source, as shown from Apollo 17 on its way back to Earth. They call this UV (colour), the IIa-O film, in the original description. Once you are away from the Moon, the light intensity progressively drops, but UV light has much more energy and can be detected further out. Beyond a certain distance though, even this UV light can only be captured spectrographically. The bright white Moon is, in my model, the result of this UV from the Lunar surface reaching us by the energy of the Vacuum UV soliton 'beams', which interact with our atmosphere, giving off the white, transvers waves that our eyes need.
(won't link, remove spaces again)
w w w.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2001/07/view_of_the_moon_seen_apollo_17/9215843-5-eng-GB/View_of_the_Moon_seen_Apollo_17_node_f ull_image.jpg
And there are lots of UV images of the Moon fro various craft. IR has been a little more difficult, and in thermal IR it was only a few years ago that the Moon was imaged.
upload.wikimedia.org...

That is not a UV image, it was taken using a standard Hasseblad and film. Nowhere on your source does it refer to it as a UV image. Your made up science is, well, made up.

Well sure, close to the surface there is light of the transverse type as we might call it. Not debating that, though the light levels are generally so low that the cameras struggled with getting colour.

Really? So the colour TV broadcasts and 16mm footage were impossible?

But strange why no spectral values are available for the Moon. The SOLAR/SOLSPEC package on the ISS looks at Solar spectra, down to a 1 nm resolution, but has never looked at the Moon.

Solar spectra. Not lunar spectra. There are plenty of lunar spectra data available. Google is your friend.

Yes, even looking sideways the Earth rim is still in view, and we know that the stars are visible 'over the Earth" as she says. Lots of images in that region, it is still not deep space. An EVA test is needed again.

They aren't there for your benefit.

With regards to my earlier question about how far above Earth's limb it has to be before it stops being "the atmosphere" and starts being "space": notice the Moon rising relatively high above the limb, and not diminishing in brightness. Will it just wink out of view once it reaches "space"?

Using the radius of the Earth from that vid, you can calculate the depth to which the Moon rose, and it is still well within what we consider the atmosphere, which includes the ionosphere. How far away from the Earth the visibility will remain good is not known, as they can not track the Moon around into deep space. Only from an EVA could you determine that. Or it should be no problem to 'track' the Canadarm to follow the Moon. And yes, I believe it will wink out, but from what I have been able to find from images from the shuttles, it will become light brown, then a reddish-brown, dark brown, and then yes, it will fade out. That would be a neat experiment I'd say, let's try it!

Here is a graph of the ionosphere and temperature profile up to 1000 kM or so. Looks like the ISS may be in a denser ion layer.

utd500.utdallas.edu...

edit on 17-1-2014 by GaryN because: trying to insert an image

edit on 17-1-2014 by GaryN because: swearing at the site software

edit on 17-1-2014 by GaryN because: (no reason given)

It should be no problem. but they have better things to do. You need to actually start taking photographs of stars, then you might get a grip on why what you see isn't always in the photographs.

In fact, can we just summarise how the debate looks so far to save the effort:

"I demand pictures of stars taken in space, because there aren't any"

"You mean like these?"

"No, I mean the other pictures that don't show the stars I insist you show me, and find me some people who say they saw them"

"You mean like these?"

"No, different ones that no one knows about and don't exist, and not those people either, they're astronauts what do they know"

and so on and so on and so on...

reply to post by onebigmonkey

That is not a UV image, it was taken using a standard Hasseblad and film. Nowhere on your source does it refer to it as a UV image. Your made up science is, well, made up.

What are these?
www.lpi.usra.edu...

Hint:
[83 ultraviolet images (0 surface; 10 orbital; 73 other)]

GaryN
reply to post by onebigmonkey

 

That is not a UV image, it was taken using a standard Hasseblad and film. Nowhere on your source does it refer to it as a UV image. Your made up science is, well, made up.

What are these?
www.lpi.usra.edu...

Hint:
[83 ultraviolet images (0 surface; 10 orbital; 73 other)]

edit on 17-1-2014 by GaryN because: (no reason given)

You were linking to an Apollo 17 image, this is Apollo 16 images. Anyhoo, UV film rolls are marked as such, other film rolls are for regular visible light.

Apollo 15 and 16 had one UV roll each, other Apollo missions didn't have them. Apollo 12 had a roll of infrared film. All those rolls were for experimental photography, and there are plenty of Moon shots from orbit and during trans-lunar flight taken using regular film. www.lpi.usra.edu...

GaryN
reply to post by onebigmonkey

 

That is not a UV image, it was taken using a standard Hasseblad and film. Nowhere on your source does it refer to it as a UV image. Your made up science is, well, made up.

What are these?
www.lpi.usra.edu...

Hint:
[83 ultraviolet images (0 surface; 10 orbital; 73 other)]

edit on 17-1-2014 by GaryN because: (no reason given)

I'll echo what wildespace has said above: you weren't linking to a UV image. I never said it was impossible to photograph the moon in UV - I said it was not a good UV source - you'll have noticed that the UV images taken on the moon itself are not washed out with surface glare from UV. The UV you see in those images is reflected rays from the lunar surface, not produced by the lunar surface itself, and the moon's albedo means it reflects less than, for example, the Earth. The moon is being mapped in UV by the LRO which is capturing UV light in permanently shadowed areas (ie never lit by the sun) that is actually reflected light from high UV producing stars. Where does that fit into your theory?

Stars are visible in space. Stars can be photographed in space. Atmosphere is not required for this to happen.

Just for fun, here is a newly released image of the Earth and moon taken together in 1967 by Lunar Orbiter 4



Cool

reply to post by onebigmonkey


The problem with GaryN is with every thread about this subject he comes up with a new reason when a picture is posted that proves him wrong the list is a follows.

Air in the space suit or craft, the object is being filmed through a thin layer of atmosphere to wait for it cameras used on satellites/probes don't work the same way as a normal digital camera.

Although myself and others have posted images showing the Earth/Moon/Stars from great distances he always comes up with some lame excuse!!!

reply to post by wmd_2008

The problem with GaryN is with every thread about this subject he comes up with a new reason when a picture is posted that proves him wrong the list is a follows.

Well I've just never seen anybody post anything that convinces me that what those images show could be seen by the human eye, many are in UV or IR, and many more still from instruments that work nothing like the human eye. Now that Chris Hadfield has quite clearly stated it is an endless black out there from an EVA, I'm even more convinced that our eyes will be useless in space.

Although myself and others have posted images showing the Earth/Moon/Stars from great distances he always comes up with some lame excuse!!!

Whats lame about explaining the science behind those images, and how it means our eyes could not see what the instrument sees?

Her's another crazy idea I was thinking about. There are hundreds of communicatins satellites in geo-stationary orbits, at about 35,000 kM above Earth. What would we see from them with a video or still camera that used "normal prime lens", that give the closest approximation to what our eyes would see from that distance. The satellites already have high download bandwidth capability, so why not put some inexpensive cameras, a low light HD video camera, and a decent still camera for longer exposures, and just have them viewing the Earth from space and downloading the data in real time. The video may have to be compressed to fin in a standard downlink channel, but that's easy enough. So I st up the scene in Celestia and capture 5 shots from different angles, but all at around 34,000 kM. Imagine this as a 'live' backround screen on your monitor, cool! I run it on a seperate desktop so I can just check out now and again what Earth would look like from up there.

Earth from high orbit.(flickr site)
www.flickr.com...

GaryN
reply to post by wmd_2008

 

Now that Chris Hadfield has quite clearly stated it is an endless black out there from an EVA, I'm even more convinced that our eyes will be useless in space.

You are so dishonest. He was talking about EVA with headlamps still on, no dark adaptation. When asked point blank if they see stars when dark adapted, astronauts have told me that they do, ALL OVER the sky. Barbara Morgan among them. I'll ask Al Worden this weekend, but he's already stated in interviews that the sky was filled with stars when he went behind the moon's shadow and the earth's light was also blocked by the moon. Filled with stars to the point he couldn't even recognize his constellations anymore. I know what that's like at very dark sites on earth, it's a rare experience.

Whats lame about explaining the science behind those images,

That is not what you do, at all. You invent excuses to ignore any evidence which disproves you.