Does NASA remove the stars?

A little while ago I downloaded a high res image of ISS taken from the space shuttle. The first thing I usualy do, is zooming and enhancing to see if I can detect some anomalies.

What caught my attention was what, at least to me, looked like stars, but only verry close to, and even visible thrue, the atmosphere. A bit higher there were no stars at all. Just empty space.

Isn't that strange? And if indeed they are stars, why remove them from the image?? If the stars are even visible thrue the MUCH LIGHTER atmosphere, surely they must be visible against a black background. Is it not?

Below are the links to the images, including the original, I am refering to:

external image

external image

And here another one, earth by night:

external image

If they are stars, could it be that NASA removes them to avoid explaining how it was possible that there were no stars in the lunar images taken during the apollo misions?



[edit on 24-5-2008 by 2Faced]

[edit on 24-5-2008 by 2Faced]

I don't think they are stars. Could be space junk, dust, or something else orbiting, even digital glitches. But stars won't be seen due to the fact that the earth, ISS, or other heavenly body is to bright, causing a fast shutter speed, which is far too fast for the stars to show up in the picture. Same reason as why you cannot see stars in shots taken by the apollo astronauts on the moon.

You can't see the light from stars in space because there is no atmosphere to scatter or reflect light rays. This is normal.

However, I am not sure if looking through an atmosphere from space allows you to see the stars, I would think some kind of atmosphere would have to be surrounding the lens at least to get that.

Are you sure?? Look at the link below, and tell me that is "space junk"

external image

[edit on 24-5-2008 by 2Faced]

To the first (first two):
I see white dot's all over the picture. Check the right corner. A lot white dots. Also check above on the space shuttle rudder. There is also one.
So could be a camera white dot problem.

To the third (earth):
Seems to me that this are stars but that here the star background you would see here (earth in the dark) is really cutted away for the purpose to have an art picture with just the earth only.


[edit on 24-5-2008 by g210b]

I didn't say it was space junk for certain, I just said it wasn't stars. And that pic, not sure if it is a real picture or not...aren't those "cities at night" pics composites of some sort?

i don't think its data loss those tend to be square 'holes' in the frame, could well be that its space junk or stars that were removed for aesthetic reasons to clean up the image for use as screensavers, desktop backgrounds etc

Did some more searching, and indeed discovered (googled) some pictures with stars vaguely visible in the background. I guess I jumped the gun a bit to soon.

Thanks for educating, sorry for wastin yer time

This is NOT the reason you can't see stars in some pictures from space. Read "SensFan's" post above yours for the right reason. It all has to do with the brightness of the subject (in this case the Earth) and camera shutter speeds. It's likely that the astronauts who took that picture COULD see stars that the camera did not pick up -- although if they were looking the bright Earth, they may have not seen many.

For example, if I used a camera whose shutter speed was set to take picutes in daylight and tried to take pictures of the night sky, the picture I get would probably not show any stars (except for possibly Sirius or the Planet Venus -- maybe), even on the darkest, starryest of nights.


Yes -- The "Earth by Night" image is not a "real" picture but a composite image made up of many pictures and computer art, all put together with something like Photoshop to create a pretty picture, suitable for framing.

That picture certainly uses some real imagery, but it is not itself a real image. I doubt the "outer space" surrounding the Earth shown in that picture is even real.


[edit on 6/13/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

One thing i dont get it.

If we cannot see light in space, how come we can see lots of stars in the Hubble/Voyager/etc pics ?

reply to post by 2Faced

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They remove the stars because on the earlier missions you can see many things moving around in orbit. They used to show live video. Just the other day/night I was watching the nasa channel and when the astronaut went to spacewalk you could see the background stars between his arm and helmet for a brief second. then all was black. Facing away from the earth with video you should see what is there not blackness. The video is not live anymore and they black it out so you can not see the .... ufos? satellites? Look for earlier mission videos and you will see the difference. you can see many many stars in those videos, and things moving around above, inside and through our atomosphere. What they are is your best guess. Nasa claims they are frozen bits of ice pushed by retro rocket firing. Then all went black. Interesting eh?