Stars Can't Be Seen from Outer Space

Listen to Leroy Chiao at 6:14 in this video. "...looking away from the Sun, it's the darkest black you can imagine.." Confirms what Chris Hadfield has said, but somehow you guys can put words in their mouths to make it sound like they could see stars. Same with the Apollo Lunar EVA astronauts, none of who said they could see stars, or planets, when while looking away from the Sun they should have been able to. The bright Lunar surface excuse doesn't wash, they could have just put up one arm up in front of their visors to block that bright lunar surface.
www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: GaryN
Listen to Leroy Chiao at 6:14 in this video. "...looking away from the Sun, it's the darkest black you can imagine.." Confirms what Chris Hadfield has said, but somehow you guys can put words in their mouths to make it sound like they could see stars.

And your putting words in his mouth and saying that he couldn't see stars - he clearly gives you an explanation as to why you can't when the sun is in direct view. He says nothing about not being able to see stars. A black sky does not equal no stars.

Same with the Apollo Lunar EVA astronauts, none of who said they could see stars, or planets, when while looking away from the Sun they should have been able to.The bright Lunar surface excuse doesn't wash, they could have just put up one arm up in front of their visors to block that bright lunar surface.

Because that's how it works on Earth right? All I have to do is put my arm up to shield the sun and all of sudden it goes completely dark...

a reply to: GaryN

Go outside at night and look up at the stars. You may not see many right away. But the longer you stay in the dark, the more stars you will see. This is because your night vision has improved. Your night vision will dramatically improve after about 10 minutes of being in the dark. You will be at your best night vision in about a half hour.

It's not as simple as looking from a bright area to a dark area is it

I was out the other night with a friend he set up his camera on a tracker, it was about 3 hours after sunset, skies nice and clear Milky Way was easy to spot,even looking at the lcd screen after the exposure REDUCED the number of stars you could see when we looked back up it was about another 5 mins to get back to the previous levels.

The Sun from the Moon. I suspected Lunar dust makes it visible, and it seems I may have been correct.

www.lpi.usra.edu...

We report that nanometer-sized silicon-dioxide particles are sintered to optical transparency at temperatures even below 1000°C, forming nonporous bulk silica glass. The resultant silica glass exhibits visible emission, which appears white to the naked eye, in the wavelength range from ∼400to∼700nm at room temperature under ultraviolet excitation. The observed emission is quite stable after prolonged exposure to the atmosphere and shows no appreciable light-induced degradation. The present photoluminescencecharacteristics are found to be basically different from those reported previously for silicananoparticles and silica-based porous materials.

scitation.aip.org...

The atmospheric lunar dust is mostly very fine silica. The halo would have been visible to the astronauts I believe, and it is Solar UV that makes it happen. Our own star would not be visible from the Moon without the dust, no wonder the ones further away can't be seen.

a reply to: GaryN
The Sun, as seen from the Moon, would have been very faint if it were only made visible by the extremely tenuous dust in the lunar "atmosphere". Certainly not anything as bright and heat-inducing as experienced and photographed by the Apollo astronauts.

Astronauts and cosmonauts in LEO report the Sun to be brighter and harsher than it appears from Earth's surface, and the absence of a thick atmosphere is the reason. If anything, a thick atmosphere softens and dims sunlight.

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: onebigmonkey
A collection of Apollo astronaut quotes about stars:

onebigmonkey.comoj.com...

Good find, maybe they were still in the earth's atmosphere when they were saying this? Neil was on the moon when he said there were no stars, so maybe that has something to do with it.

???

The link does not work for me. How did you check it out?

a reply to: GaryN

That is not what the article says.

The sunset was beautiful. I still have a brilliant blue band clear across the horizon. The sky is absolutely black, completely black. I can see the stars up above.

John Glenn describing the view on his Mercury orbital flight.

originally posted by: wildespace
a reply to: GaryN
The Sun, as seen from the Moon, would have been very faint if it were only made visible by the extremely tenuous dust in the lunar "atmosphere". Certainly not anything as bright and heat-inducing as experienced and photographed by the Apollo astronauts.

There were no reports of intense heat, the light would have been cool. The heat (IR) we feel from the Sun on Earth seems to be produced mainly by solar UV interacting with water vapour in our atmosphere.

Astronauts and cosmonauts in LEO report the Sun to be brighter and harsher than it appears from Earth's surface, and the absence of a thick atmosphere is the reason. If anything, a thick atmosphere softens and dims sunlight.

In LEO there is still enough atmosphere, depending on which direction you are looking, for the Sun to be visible. We need to know what the Sun looked like from cislunar space, but there are no photos of the Sun from there, even though they spent a total of 36 days over 6 manned missions in deep space with nothing much else to do than look out the windows. You really believe they wouldn't have taken at least one photo of the Sun?

@OBM

John Glenn describing the view on his Mercury orbital flight.

LEO again, and he is obviously looking towards Earth to see a sunset, and above the sunset he can see stars. Yes we know they can do that.

The sky is absolutely black, completely black.

Looking away from Earth, confirming what Armstrong, and others, have told us.

a reply to: GaryN

The sun is a star.

The reason you can't see other stars near the sun is because of contrast/nightblindness - shine a torch in your eye for a second or two then turn off all the lights and it'll take 30 seconds or so to get any nightvision.

Atmospheric dust and lensing would also play a role but it's role would be far less than the limits imposed by flaws in human eyesight and 50 year old camera tech.

originally posted by: GaryN

There were no reports of intense heat, the light would have been cool. The heat (IR) we feel from the Sun on Earth seems to be produced mainly by solar UV interacting with water vapour in our atmosphere.

Wrong.

The heat warming our atmosphere is radiating back out from Earth.

LEO again, and he is obviously looking towards Earth to see a sunset, and above the sunset he can see stars. Yes we know they can do that.

Looking away from Earth, confirming what Armstrong, and others, have told us.

Clearly if is seeing stars in a black sky he is not look through atmosphere.

Havnt read all the posts, so this has probably been mentioned before.

If you cant see stars from space, then what the hell is "hubble" recording? Fairy dust?

And being a very amateur photographer - any photos taken from the moon (having little or no atmosphere = extremely bright ambient light from sun and moon surface reflection) would have required an aperture setting so low, that any stars that were present in the background would not show in the shot..Thus a black looking background.

Moon

Just go outside in full moonlit night, take a photo of the moon with correct settings and you will see no stars in the background shot. Same thing, very low aperture setting = no stars (cause they are way dimmer than the moon). Doesnt mean they are not there, they are just not visible in the shot.

originally posted by: GaryN
There were no reports of intense heat

During the Apollo 15 mission, the mechanism in a TV camera and one of the Hasselblad cameras were affected by overheating from the Sun.
h2g2.com...
(I'll try to find more links, but Google is your friend, as they say...)

In LEO there is still enough atmosphere, depending on which direction you are looking, for the Sun to be visible.

Funny then how instead of appearing dimmer due to the very rarefied atmosphere (practically vacuum to us), the Sun in LEO is brighter/whiter/harsher like I said. Astronauts visiting the Cupola module commented on how quickly you get the "suntan" from the unshielded solar radiation.

a reply to: wildespace

Astronauts visiting the Cupola module commented on how quickly you get the "suntan" from the unshielded solar radiation.

From the cupola the Sun is only visible for a brief period at sunrise/sunset, hardly long enough to get a tan. The EVA astronauts have only ever commented on feeling the warmth of the Sun through their visors at sunrise/sunset, and that is when heat is being created by solar UV passing through the lower atmosphere.
And no answers as to why they never took a picture of the Sun, or planets, or stars from cislunar space??
Not even a description of the Sun from cislunar space by any of them? Get serious.

a reply to: cooperton

Due to the exposure the photos taken from space are taken in, you cannot see the stars. Also, stars are not usually visible on the day side of the earth due to light. At least that's what they tell us.

a reply to: GaryN

So how did they manage to navigate to the moon and back using star fixes?

originally posted by: GaryN

And no answers as to why they never took a picture of the Sun, or planets, or stars from cislunar space??

Yet again I have to post this image to you:



As you well know it is an Apollo 16 image taken in cislunar space showing Venus, Mars and Saturn, amongst many stars.

I have lost count of the number of times I have posted it in response to your claim, so you can't say you don't know about it.

Once again I will point you at this:

onebigmonkey.com...

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: wildespace

Astronauts visiting the Cupola module commented on how quickly you get the "suntan" from the unshielded solar radiation.

From the cupola the Sun is only visible for a brief period at sunrise/sunset, hardly long enough to get a tan.

Source please.
What is illuminating the ISS in this photo?

The EVA astronauts have only ever commented on feeling the warmth of the Sun through their visors at sunrise/sunset

Source please.

I can't believe that a thread of this nature has been alive for 8 months now. The whole basis appears to revolve around a few sentences spoken by respected astronauts that are given a totally different context than was intended.

I wish ATS provided a function to make certain threads invisible, so that we wouldn't have to see "Stars Can't Be Seen from Outer Space" popping up every week or so.

originally posted by: GaryN
And no answers as to why they never took a picture of the Sun

That's right, they never did, GaryN says so:



Apollo 12 solar eclipse 16mm footage.