No Stars in NASA Photographs

How come everytime they show a picture from space there is never any stars showing. All you see is black space. Is there a logical reason for this or are they blacking them out?

I read somewhere just the other day that when they take these pictures, the sun is shining in the sky so it "dulls" the other stars, the same way it happens on Earth. During the day you don't see the stars because the light from the sun overpowers the, by comparison, dim insignificant stars. Same thing happening on the Moon and Mars and anywhere else.

answers.yahoo.com...

Yep....moon conspiracy buffs always try to bring this up, but one has to remember that video and photos work similar to our eyes, but not exactly, and they typically will not pick up the faint light of stars if any nearby object of brightness exists (including the sun's reflection off the moon's surface, etc.)

Same thing here. The brightness of the sunlight off of the earth drowns out the faint starlight...when looking at space video or pics...

Well, there seem to be stars in the sky in this image (AS11-39-5748):




Link to image at Apollo Lunar Surface Journal:
www.hq.nasa.gov...

Moon conspiracy theories? Talk about "science" straight out of the trailer park. I wish Buzz Aldrin would punch more of those guys in the face.

It's really irritating when people keep bringing this up as evidence (without doing any further investigation). Don't worry, I'm not referring to you.

Even cameras mounted to telescopes need to keep their shutters open for minutes, sometimes even hours, in order to catch the light from the night sky. Typically someone will take more than one photograph and then overlay the multiple images over one another at varying transparencies, to make as much of the captured light as visible as possible.

It's not as simple as going *snap* with a home camera.

indeed. i'll bet if they wanted to get shots of stars on a lunar horizon shot, they might be able to get the stars, but the landscape might come out completely overexposed if it was during the "day" - nothing but bright white.

if the contrast between the stars and the ambient light on the surface is minimal then they can get a shot like the one shown above.

[edit on 5-6-2008 by an0maly33]

reply to post by Gazrok


The effect you speak of occurs when the bright objects light is diffused by the atmosphere surrounding the point of view. Windows act in much the same way as the atmosphere in this respect. We all know that looking out a window at night is much easier when you turn the lights off. Think of Earth as the room with the window. During the day, sunlight is reflected by the surface, illuminating the room. At night, there's no light to be reflected by the "window" (atmosphere), enabling you to see through the "window".

When viewing from a location with no atmosphere, stars should be visible, even if the sun is within the field of view. In photographs however, exposure must be considered as well. With the sun in the field of view, especially from a vantage point with no atmosphere, exposure must be minimal to avoid overexposure. As exposure time drops, so will the number of stars that can be seen in the resulting photographs.

The thinker in me tells me this is why so many NASA photos don't have stars in them.

The CT in me tells me it's because they're photo-chopped out (then the thinker asks why on earth would they want to hide stars).

The fantasy driven CT in me tells me that it's because they're not hiding the stars, they're hiding the atmospheres.