HD special from the ISS

This morning i was watching Discovery HD, and they had a re-run of a live broadcast from the ISS. It was pretty cool they had the American astronaut miked and talking about life on the ISS, while the ESA member of the crew was the camera man. They were asked questions by a reporter ,on the ground, while they gave a tour of the station.
They talked about some of the experiments that they do, they had a DOD experiment on board. It was a small "satellite", is what the astronaut callled it. It was about the size of a soccer ball, had thrusters of some sort on it, and they were remotely controlled, and they flew them around inside the space station, and got them to dock with each other and other stuff.
The image quality from the HD cameras is stunning, they took a shot out of the window at the earth, as they passed over africa. As the cameraman zoomed in, you could almost see a city below.
Now the two points of my post
1) They took several shots out of the windows into space, and just like your supposed to, you could see no stars. Just a void, explicit in its blackness.
2) As the astronaut signed off he said, "This is so and so, and I've been speaking to you from the International Space Station ALPHA"
Then signed off very quickly.
Space Station Alpha?
That is the first time I've heard it refered to in such a fashion.
Usually something is only refered to *** Alpha , if there is a *** Beta.
If there is only one there is no reason to give it an individual designation. to be distinguish it from another.
Maybe John Lear is right about a second station. It is possible, one not quite a large, built with "modern" technology, not the 10-15 year old designs going into the ISS.
A couple of years ago the Airforce sent up the single largest payload, since the Apollo program. It was bigger than any piece of the space station lifted so far. It was classifed as to what it was, so classified that when the head of the senate intelligence commitee inquired about it he was denied access the any information about it. It was expensive too , the senator discovered it only through its un-catagorized classified expenditures. It was rumored it was the newest KH series satellite.
Was it a second space station?, orbital weapons platform? Misty?
Any thoughts?

reply to post by punkinworks


Indeed, it does sound odd to refer to it as "Alpha" when there is only supposed to be one. It would make a susoecious person, which none of us are of course, think that he was in the habit of using that term out of habit in communications.

I wonder if anyone has a copy of that around the house? Before that gets chopped off.

Good catch punkin', nothing gets past ATSers.

reply to post by punkinworks


The ISS was originally called Space Station Alpha back when the project was annouced in the early 90's and before that it was Space Station Freedom, when it was a US only project. And like how all the Space Shuttles have there own names, the official name for the ISS is "Alpha". Bill Sheperd, who was the first commander of the Station gave it that name. Here's an old article about it www.space.com...

Yup, the official name of the ISS is indeed "Alpha," as jra pointed out.

Now, the logic behind a "Beta" station being some sort of weapons platform or anything like that might be a little flawed. It being an International Space Station implied efforts from around the globe, so why would other countries allow something like that to go up.

As for your first question, why no stars can be seen in the images can best be answered by this article: Why are there no stars when the astronauts take pictures from space

The stars are there and the astronauts can see them if they look away from the sun. The reason that the stars do not show up on the film is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure. Our eyes are a lot more sensitive to light than photographic film. A good example of this is when we take a picture with a camera that is back lighted. The photographer can plainly see the features and colors of the object(usually a relative), but when the picture is developed, only the shadow outline can be seen of the person without any features.

reply to post by cmdrkeenkid


I'm completly aware as to why no stars can be seen in a daytime camera shot from space. I was just pointing it out to all of those who go on and on about not being able to see stars in the nasa pics from space.
Since the offical name of the space station is alpha, then there nothing to see here, and we can all move along.
I've just never heard it refered to as such.
And I'm not sure how i missed it before, cause there it is in print call sign ALPHA, on the nasa website.
The only reason I caught it was through intonation of how he said it, " speaking to you from the International space station alpha", with the emphasis on international then space station alpha.
I personaly dont think there is a manned "secret space station", the logistics for keeping such a thing up are tremendous. You would not be able to keep it secret for very long. And howd they get it up there, all of the shuttle missions are fully documented. The airforce has launch capabilities but only a limited number of vehicles, and there havnt been many launches from vandenburg over the last few years, the only airforce launch facility.

Nothing to see here, lets all move along.
But if anyone gets a chance to see the show I highly recomend it.

Originally posted by punkinworks
But if anyone gets a chance to see the show I highly recomend it.

What was the name of the program itself? I would like to see it.

I'd like to see this too, anyone with a link to this?

Also, that photo (not-so) 101 lesson is untrue, the film speed of large format (high-res) cameras SHOULD pick up more stars and particles w/ any long exposure, I think this is the usual airbrushing example, like when you look at the perimeter of any 'hi res' Moon photos, the edge is usually obviously touched up... any dark photography obviously has better detail (like the one at the end of this post) w/ long-exposure.

Lastly, the "alpha" thing besides the ISS's original name, implies a "beta" -- maybe it's in relation to a future (or present?) Moon base.

Amateur photographers would pick up any "secret" space station w/ open-shutter photography, like this one of the ISS, Venus and the Moon: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...

[edit on 12-11-2007 by anhinga]