Lunokhod photos show stars on the Moon

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: smurfy
Are not all those Lunokhod pictures phototelevision video sent back via FM by the rovers and orbiters via a in-house made system. Jodrell Bank got picture/s from a signal. Most pictures we got were second generation or worse, scans.

It seems that the pictures received were quite good,

"On February 3, 1966, Luna-9 became the first spacecraft to land on the Moon. On February 4 and 5, it transmitted 3 cycloramic panoramas from an optical-mechanical camera. The camera was developed by A.S. Selivanov and his team at the Institute of Space Device Engineering, and the results were analyzed at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute and by A.I. Lebedinskii at Moscow University. The images were transmitted as analog FM video signals at one stroke per second over a 250 Hz subcarrier (equivalent to 500 pixels/line)"

Moon catalogue,

mentallandscape.com...

These images (link below) have the "Roscosmos" water mark on them, so maybe these are "official" images? (maybe not).

In any case, the images in this link seem very good quality for being transmitted TV images, although they do seem to have the same noise that the OP confused for stars. The noise in the images is consistent, whether it be in the sky (to be confused as stars) or if that noise be on top of objects, such as on top of parts of the rover or on top of the Moon's surface (in which case they would most definitely not be stars).

Lunokhod 2 Images

Yes, it mentions black and white 'grabbing' in the link I posted when the scanning and printing was done, and besides that the degradation of the pictures from the scanning then printing, never mind the likely electronic noise in the signals. I think there is even one picture at the link with a plethera of 'stars' in a halo round the rover in the area of black sky.

Funny thing about this thread is why? It can't be to do with the 'No Mooner' meme can it? I thought that was done and dusted.

originally posted by: mrkeen
You are reiterating the same argument, so I will have to repeat the answer.

He didn't ask you to be a broken record, he asked you to identify the stars. You can't, because they aren't stars, not that it's impossible to photograph stars from the moon. You could do it, you just need to set the exposure long enough and then the moon's surface, if it's in the frame at all, would be overexposed.

It was ok to not know the difference between noise and stars in your OP, but when someone explains how to tell the difference and you don't learn from that, it doesn't reflect well on your capacity to learn from others who know more about the subject than you do.

a reply to: Box of Rain

Being on the Moon was as like the brightness of being in a sunny asphalt car-park in the daylight on Earth. Therefore, the cameras' exposures were set to "daylight"-like settings. Those daylight-settings for the camera shutters would not allow for the shutter to remain open long enough for the stars to show up on the film.

is this really so? is a sun or a star not "Always on" so no matter when you take a picture, most stars lights have a direct line of sight and if the lights beam was already shining and incoming before you even set up the camera (even before the photographer was born), how can the shutters not allow enough light for the stars not to show up. does light maybe behave differently inside an atmosphere than it does in space, more focussed perhaps, reflecting differently in a mix of light streams falling on the surface of the moon beeing scattered light and the more direct dots falling on its plate. maybe the atmophere slows down light so much it can start to become light and become visible to the human eye as the thermosphere scatters incomming particles. on the moon there is no atmosphere so it might bounce off more direct under an angle, possibly light beams are like small needle pins or tiny tiny laser dots forming the noise itself. the program that did not recognize any star patters, did it calculate them from the right perspective beeing from the moon everything might just look a little different enough to fall outside its perimeters or something just guessing here. i dont wish do rule out nor proof the stars real in the picture, just saying theres alot of possibilities.


maybe this is already beeing done i dont know but in music we record nothing as a base noise level and later substract this noise by computer from the entire recording basically eliminating the base line noise from the entire recording.
so i got this idea reading this topic that one could make photos by telescope with the cap on first, and when blown up it would show noise, is it already custom in photography to remove a noise like this? is actually my question, when you take a shot with the cap on, photons might still penetrate but have a much harder time doing so, the amplification would also introduce a unwanted noise in the picture probably. if one knew the noise from a picture with the cap on and removed this signature from the picture would it not be sharper?

a reply to: dennisarends

Cameras usually have a hard time making stars show up in their images, and daylight settings on a camera will make that much, much harder. If you have a camera that allows for manual settings, try it for yourself.

Have your camera set to the same settings you would have for sunlit daylight photography. Then go outside on a dark starry night (one in which stars are very visible) and take a picture of the sky using the daylight settings. You will find that the pictures you take will show virtually no stars, even though they were quite visible to the naked eye (although maybe Venus or Sirius might show up). Your eyes are much better at receiving enough light to see the stars than a camera is that is set to daylight exposure settings.

Heck, even try it with night-time settings. Even then very few stars will appear in the image (far less than what your eyes saw).

a reply to: dennisarends
the program that did not recognize any star patters, did it calculate them from the right perspective beeing from the moon everything might just look a little different enough to fall outside its perimeters or something just guessing here. i dont wish do rule out nor proof the stars real in the picture, just saying theres alot of possibilities.

The perspective of the stars as seen from the Moon is not that different than the perspective of the stars as seen from Earth.

Besides, there are times that the Earth will be in the exact same part of space that the moon is sometimes in, as the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth-Moon system orbits the Sun.


The fact is that you can see in these Lunokhod images (below) that there certainly is a lot of noise that looks like stars - and much of that noise is obviously NOT stars because they are not in the sky, but rather layered on top of the rover itself and the moon's surface:

www.planetology.ru...

originally posted by: dennisarends
how can the shutters not allow enough light for the stars not to show up.

Because the exposure is too fast. Same reason you don't see any stars in this photo of the moon.
farm9.staticflickr.com...

does light maybe behave differently inside an atmosphere than it does in space, more focussed perhaps, reflecting differently in a mix of light streams falling on the surface of the moon beeing scattered light and the more direct dots falling on its plate. maybe the atmophere slows down light so much it can start to become light

Then put a camera in a vacuum chamber with a light inside and tell me if it all goes dark when you take the air out. Spoiler; it won't.

the program that did not recognize any star patters, did it calculate them from the right perspective beeing from the moon everything might just look a little different enough to fall outside its perimeters or something just guessing here.

The moon is only 384,400 km away. No, that doesn't matter. That is why the Apollo photo with real stars DID solve just fine. It was also much higher resolution, but even at 74.4 arcseconds per pixel, the stars would have to physically be located somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn in order to show even a single pixel's worth of parallax. Needless to say they're all orders of magnitude farther away than that.

i dont wish do rule out nor proof the stars real in the picture, just saying theres alot of possibilities.

No there isn't. There is only one possibility; those are not stars.

originally posted by: dennisarends
a reply to: Box of Rain
how can the shutters not allow enough light for the stars not to show up?

It's very simple really - stars are very dim. For a human, it takes being in relative darkness and having dark-adaped vision to see stars well, and for a camera it takes long exposure time and good film or sensor sensitivity. In a sunlit scene on the Moon, both the camera and the eye have to adapt to bright sunlight, and so will not see the much fainter stars.

a reply to: wildespace
This camera could see the stars and galaxies, even with the (some say) bright lunar surface. Long exposures in the far UV region.
www.ninfinger.org...
And here are the images that NASA didn't think worth showing us.
www3.telus.net...
No reason they couldn't have taken long exposures with their Hasselblads too, but they didn't go to the moon to do astrophotography, we can do that from Earth. ;-)

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: wildespace
This camera could see the stars and galaxies, even with the (some say) bright lunar surface. Long exposures in the far UV region.
www.ninfinger.org...

Yes, that's why they took it to the moon.

And here are the images that NASA didn't think worth showing us.

www3.telus.net...

Those images have been publicly available for decades. I have copies of the UV image of Earth in newspapers and magazines from 1972.

No reason they couldn't have taken long exposures with their Hasselblads too, but they didn't go to the moon to do astrophotography, we can do that from Earth. ;-)

They did plenty of astrophotography from the moon using the Hasselblads, just not from the surface. There are explanations in this and other threads as to why lunar surface astrophotography using conventional film during Apollo would not have been possible. You can add 'they didn't have a tripod for the Hasselblads' to the list.

Your failure to understand simple and repeated explanations does not invalidate those explanations or magically make the impossible possible.

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: wildespace
This camera could see the stars and galaxies, even with the (some say) bright lunar surface. Long exposures in the far UV region.
www.ninfinger.org...

To quote from that article, "An advantage of the electronographic technique used was that it was completely insensitive to visible and near-UV light." The Sun radiates little in far-UV, and the lunar surface would be quite dark when imaged at those wavelengths. Besides, how can we know that any of the images had the lunar surface in their field of view? Looking at the camera's setup, it was pointed up.

Astronaut Michael Collins 1969: " I DON'T REMEMBER SEEING ANY"

Astronaut Niel Armstrong 1970 "THE SKY IS A DEEP BLACK WHEN VIEWED FROM THE MOON, AS IT IS WHEN VIEWED FROM CIS-LUNAR SPACE, THE SPACE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON. THE EARTH IS THE ONLY VISIBLE OBJECT OTHER THAN THE SUN THAT CAN BE SEEN."

a reply to: Ove38

Perhaps when he turned the lights up bright inside the capsule, as he stated he liked to do, he didn't see any. From his book, Carrying the Fire:

Meanwhile, the command module is purring along in grand shape. I have turned the lights up bright, and the cockpit reflects a cheeriness which I want very much to share.

But later on he does say that he did see stars while on the night side of the moon. He is in the moon's shadow at this point, so as long as he turns down the interior lights his eyes can dark adapt and he can see the stars.

Outside my window I can see stars — and that is all. Where I know the moon to be, there is simply a black void; the moon’s presence is defined solely by the absence of stars. To compare the sensation with something terrestrial, perhaps being alone in a skiff in the middle of the pacific ocean on a pitch-black night would most nearly approximate my situation. In a skiff, one would see bright stars above and black sea below; I see the same stars, minus the twinkling of course, and absolutely nothing below. In each case, time and distance are extremely important factors.

originally posted by: Ove38
Astronaut Michael Collins 1969: " I DON'T REMEMBER SEEING ANY"

Astronaut Niel Armstrong 1970 "THE SKY IS A DEEP BLACK WHEN VIEWED FROM THE MOON, AS IT IS WHEN VIEWED FROM CIS-LUNAR SPACE, THE SPACE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON. THE EARTH IS THE ONLY VISIBLE OBJECT OTHER THAN THE SUN THAT CAN BE SEEN."

That all depends. If light from the Sun, Earthshine, or Moonshine was in their field of view and glaring on the windows, or when the cabin lights inside the CM were on, they didn't see any/many stars. However, there were times when they were looking towards total darkness, and the difference in the ability to see stars was striking enough for Armstrong to make a special comment about the difference:


Here is the Apollo 11 transcript:

02 23 59 20 CDR
Houston, it's been a real change for us. Now we are able to see stars again and recognize constellations for the first time on the trip. It's - the sky is full of stars. Just like the nightside of Earth. But all the way here, we have only been able to see stars occasionally and perhaps through the monocular, but not recognize any star patterns.

02 23 59 52 CC
I guess it has turned into night up there really, hasn't it ?

02 23 59 58 CDR
Really has.

Source:
www.hq.nasa.gov...

a reply to: wildespace
They didn't need to lug that large and heavy FUVC unit to the moon to do UV astronomy, the first successful space based telescope went up in '68.
Orbiting Astronomical Observatory

@OBM

Those images have been publicly available for decades.

And you have a link to those images?

I believe Armstrong still, he was the most savvy of the Apollo astronauts, but it is strange to me that when Mitchell said the stars were 10 times brighter in space, and that Armstrong "doesn't know what he's talking about" (when he said the stars weren't visible), that NASA never stepped in to address the discrepancy, and still hasn't. The ISS EVA astronauts are still not allowed to look out into the void, looking away from Earth, and describe what they see. Well over 200 EVA astronauts up till now, and none have described the view of deep space. Still, if there's nothing to see, they cant really say much, can they? 8)

originally posted by: ngchunter
a reply to: Ove38

Perhaps when he turned the lights up bright inside the capsule, as he stated he liked to do, he didn't see any. From his book, Carrying the Fire:

Meanwhile, the command module is purring along in grand shape. I have turned the lights up bright, and the cockpit reflects a cheeriness which I want very much to share.

But later on he does say that he did see stars while on the night side of the moon. He is in the moon's shadow at this point, so as long as he turns down the interior lights his eyes can dark adapt and he can see the stars.

Outside my window I can see stars — and that is all. Where I know the moon to be, there is simply a black void; the moon’s presence is defined solely by the absence of stars. To compare the sensation with something terrestrial, perhaps being alone in a skiff in the middle of the pacific ocean on a pitch-black night would most nearly approximate my situation. In a skiff, one would see bright stars above and black sea below; I see the same stars, minus the twinkling of course, and absolutely nothing below. In each case, time and distance are extremely important factors.

Of course one can see stars while on the night side of the moon, that's why Astronaut Michael Collins changed his statement. Did Astronaut Niel Armstrong ever changed his statement ?

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Ove38
Astronaut Michael Collins 1969: " I DON'T REMEMBER SEEING ANY"

Astronaut Niel Armstrong 1970 "THE SKY IS A DEEP BLACK WHEN VIEWED FROM THE MOON, AS IT IS WHEN VIEWED FROM CIS-LUNAR SPACE, THE SPACE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON. THE EARTH IS THE ONLY VISIBLE OBJECT OTHER THAN THE SUN THAT CAN BE SEEN."

That all depends. If light from the Sun, Earthshine, or Moonshine was in their field of view and glaring on the windows, or when the cabin lights inside the CM were on, they didn't see any/many stars. However, there were times when they were looking towards total darkness, and the difference in the ability to see stars was striking enough for Armstrong to make a special comment about the difference:


Here is the Apollo 11 transcript:

02 23 59 20 CDR
Houston, it's been a real change for us. Now we are able to see stars again and recognize constellations for the first time on the trip. It's - the sky is full of stars. Just like the nightside of Earth. But all the way here, we have only been able to see stars occasionally and perhaps through the monocular, but not recognize any star patterns.

02 23 59 52 CC
I guess it has turned into night up there really, hasn't it ?

02 23 59 58 CDR
Really has.

Source:
www.hq.nasa.gov...

If this transcript is something he really said in 1969, why would he say this in 1970 ?

"THE SKY IS A DEEP BLACK WHEN VIEWED FROM THE MOON, AS IT IS WHEN VIEWED FROM CIS-LUNAR SPACE, THE SPACE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON. THE EARTH IS THE ONLY VISIBLE OBJECT OTHER THAN THE SUN THAT CAN BE SEEN."

a reply to: Ove38

He is describing the view from the lunar surface. Not space. When I view the night sky from Earth it is black. It also has stars in it.

Astronauts discussed, described and photographed stars all the time during and after Apollo. If you want to discuss that then talk about it in the Apollo thread, rather than diverting this one.

Read this, you might learn something:

onebigmonkey.comoj.com...

a reply to: mrkeen

This is what you get when you take pictures of stars in space with a hand held camera:





These are long exposures taken with a Nikon camera during one of the Apollo missions. They were attempting to photograph the zodiacal light. The stars/no stars argument has been going on so long I forget which mission this was from. Apollo was real, deal with it!

a reply to: DJW001

Apollo 17

The particularly bright one is Jupiter, and if you check the star charts for the time and date it was taken, Jupiter is exactly where it should be

originally posted by: ngchunter.....
It's just a matter of high contrast and noise.

Thanks for taking the time and care to explain this so clearly. It's a pleasure to read.