Lunokhod photos show stars on the Moon

Just wanted to share two rare photos from the Soviet Lunokhod rover. The first one is part of a larger panoramic photo. In both photos stars can be clearly seen in the sky. The presence of the sunlit surface does not make them disappear. Also, the shadows are very sharp, without gradients or half-tones.





You can open images in a separate window to see more detail.

For comparison, a hi-res Apollo moon photo:

www.hq.nasa.gov...

If you increase the brightness in the latter photo, you will not see any grain. This is suprising, because the non-uniform starry background would activate grains with varying intensity, and at least some background noise must be present.

How can you tell those are stars? There's millions of those little dots all over those very low quality photos as far as I can tell.

ETA: Look at the dark spots on the leg or whatever that is, plenty of dots in there as well. I'm sure there weren't stars there...same thing with the dark spots on the bottom photo in the shadows of the rock or whatever that is. Plenty of dots there. I'm quite sure they aren't stars there either.

Can you verify they are stars, and not some sort of noise or image anomaly?


Also, to be accurate, it is not exactly "The presence of the sunlit surface" that makes the stars "disappear" from the Apollo images, per se. The reason for no stars in the Apollo images is due to the camera settings required by the brightness of the moon. 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.

So , while you are right that the lack of stars is related to the sunlit moon surface, it is not exactly the case that the sunlit surface was drowning out the stars.

However, that may be the reason why astronauts had a tough time seeing the stars. It would be similar to you standing under a bright streetlamp at night and looking up into the night sky. The brightness of the streetlamp would prevent you from seeing stars easily.


But I digress...Back to my first question: Can you verify they are stars, and not some sort of noise or image anomaly? As pimpish stated above, I see star-like dots on objects in the image, not just in the sky.

originally posted by: Pimpish
How can you tell those are stars? There's millions of those little dots all over those very low quality photos as far as I can tell.

ETA: Look at the dark spots on the leg or whatever that is, plenty of dots in there as well. I'm sure there weren't stars there...same thing with the dark spots on the bottom photo in the shadows of the rock or whatever that is. Plenty of dots there. I'm quite sure they aren't stars there either.

The larger spots are clearly stars, maybe some of them are planets. As for the rest, the most important thing is that the noise is not uniform. This is to be expected if you have parallel lighting of varying density and intensity. The starry sky is exactly such type of background. Some areas of the background contain more actively lighted grains, and these are obviously regions that received more starlight.
Also, the absolutely black shadows show that noise is not omnipresent. The same effects should be in Apollo photos. You needn't have clear and sharp stars picture, but you will have non-uniform noise with some very obvious bright stars.

There are also "stars" in the dark regions of the moon in that photo, as has already been pointed out. If those were real stars you should be able to tell us WHICH stars they are by astrometry. Here is astrometry of a photo from Apollo showing real stars from the moon:
nova.astrometry.net...
That image solved because the stars are real. You can even see Jupiter which is the brightest star in the image, and you can confirm that the coordinates for Jupiter are exactly what they should be given Jupiter's position at the time that image was taken:
h.dropcanvas.com...

Your image of "stars" does not solve.
nova.astrometry.net...
Even extracting just the sky portion does not help matters.
nova.astrometry.net...
That's because it's just film grain, not real stars. No, you can NOT see stars in fast film exposures designed to properly expose the moon's surface. As for your assertion that indirect lighting from the bright daylit lunar surface should not work on the moon for some strange and magical reason... Wrong.
blogs.nvidia.com...
Here, I can make the Apollo photos look like the Lunokhod photos...
h.dropcanvas.com...
It's just a matter of high contrast and noise.

originally posted by: ngchunter
There are also "stars" in the dark regions of the moon in that photo, as has already been pointed out. If those were real stars you should be able to tell us WHICH stars they are by astrometry.

You are reiterating the same argument, so I will have to repeat the answer. You don't expect to get light noise without the light source. The black shadows in the foreground are completely black. This proves that noise is not some kind of static on the matrix or energy particles rain or solar wind or anything. You have light noise where you have light affecting the camera. And the density and intensity of this noise follows the same properties of the light source. This is similar to dithering when you get a noisy picture, but still can see the features through it. In the same way you can see the brightest objects (stars or planets) clearly, and the rest repeats the background properties in a stochastic manner.

originally posted by: ngchunter
..No, you can NOT see stars in fast film exposures designed to properly expose the moon's surface...

Correct.

If I took a camera, and manually set the shutter speeds/exposure settings to take picture in sunny daylight, and then tried to take pictures while still using those daylight settings of a dark starry, starry sky at night (a night sky in which stars are easily visible to the naked eye), you can bet that almost certainly no stars/planets would show up in the resulting image, except maybe Sirius, Venus, or Jupiter (maybe).

The shutter speeds would just be too fast. The images taken on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts used daylight camera settings.

Also, this thing about grain has to be specifically emphasized. On Earth the grainy image in the shadows is due to the presence of lighting. There is no way to trigger a grain chemically other than its receiving photons. Grains cannot auto-activate just because the diaphragm is open. So, if you have noise, you can safely conclude that there were some photons coming from that specific direction, and you can estimate, at least statistically, some properties of the light source. The same with the sky above the Moon. The light coming from the stars makes the sky look less black and more grainy than the shadows on the Moon surface. This is a more natural phenomenon than not having any grain at all in the sky region of the photo.

a reply to: mrkeen

Very rousing.

I can see "Pimpish"'s point. The passage of time on the image is not lending. If we were to suppose that they are in fact stars, and not just mere aberrations, then I would gander the revisit of some old lunar conspiracies.

The staple Nasa, and more recently Chinese images are consistent with the Moon's horizon/skyline. The contemporary scuttlebutt points to tampering via blurring and fabricated, superposed insert.

Just glancing at the Nasa photo referenced, the foremost feature of the photo that flagged me, is the suspicious contrast in the grade of the substrate. The pattern makes a sharp transition, in a relatively close proximity in reference to truncated depth. The textures are in conflict.

Marry that with dubious dunes and ephemeral skies, it does raise an eyebrow.

Here are some panoramas from Lunokhod 2. Pretty much just look like noise to me.

www.planetology.ru...

Specifically this panorama:

www.planetology.ru...

There is something partially blocking the lens on either side of the panorama. Yet there are still little white dots all through it.

originally posted by: mrkeen

originally posted by: ngchunter
There are also "stars" in the dark regions of the moon in that photo, as has already been pointed out. If those were real stars you should be able to tell us WHICH stars they are by astrometry.

You are reiterating the same argument, so I will have to repeat the answer. You don't expect to get light noise without the light source.

Yes, you do. Clearly you've never done astrophotography before. Take a dark frame with the cap on, develop it and blow it up. Tell me there's no noise or grain there.

The black shadows in the foreground are completely black.

No, they're not. Now you're just lying.
h.dropcanvas.com...
There's a crop from one of the foreground shadows. Is it completely black? No.

This proves that noise is not some kind of static on the matrix or energy particles rain or solar wind or anything.

It's film grain.
h.dropcanvas.com...
Get over it.

You have light noise where you have light affecting the camera. And the density and intensity of this noise follows the same properties of the light source. This is similar to dithering when you get a noisy picture, but still can see the features through it. In the same way you can see the brightest objects (stars or planets) clearly, and the rest repeats the background properties in a stochastic manner.

I put your image through astrometry, THEY ARE NOT REAL STARS AND PLANETS.
nova.astrometry.net...
The apollo image I showed DOES show real stars and planets. I proved it!
nova.astrometry.net...
h.dropcanvas.com...
It's utter hypocrisy, you automatically accuse NASA of a conspiracy because most (but not all) of the Apollo images don't show stars, but you automatically believe a Soviet image filled with film grain DOES show stars and ignore the fact that the patterns do not match ANY real pattern of stars ANYWHERE IN THE REAL SKY.

a reply to: mrkeen

By the way, just wanted to say a quick thanks for the thread despite the fact that I don't agree with it. Got me to look at some pictures I hadn't before and I enjoyed it.

I like this one especially:

www.planetology.ru...

Looks like they were doing donuts!

originally posted by: Pimpish
Here are some panoramas from Lunokhod 2. Pretty much just look like noise to me.

www.planetology.ru...

Specifically this panorama:

www.planetology.ru...

There is something partially blocking the lens on either side of the panorama. Yet there are still little white dots all through it.

Each one of those panoramas are full of noise that seem similar to the OP's "stars".

I don't believe the OP's images show stars, but it is perfectly possible to take images of stars from the lunar surface providing the conditions and camera are appropriate.

Surveyor probes 5, 6 & 7 all photographed stars at some point in their missions, eg:

www.lpi.usra.edu...

And Apollo 14 & 16 both photographed Venus from the lunar surface.

From an article with one of your images:

As with many Soviet space images, generation loss prevents us from seeing the original quality. Most Lunokhod images are derived from scanning printed images or second-generation film copies. Each stage of photography, printing and scanning introduces noise, nonlinear brighness mapping, and (worst of all) clamping to white or black.

www.redorbit.com...

The shadowed parts in those images are so black because of the very high contrast and "clamping" to white and black. Light bounces on the Moon just as it does on Earth; tall-standing rocks on the Moon get plenty of bounced light on them, as seen in the Apollo image you linked.

originally posted by: mrkeen
There is no way to trigger a grain chemically other than its receiving photons.

In case you don't know, the images from Lunokhod were not real photos, as the rovers didn't have photo cameras, they had TV cameras, so what we see is a TV image sent back to Earth and printed on Earth, those are not chemical photos.

a reply to: mrkeen

Knowing the basics of photography and seeing the high level of contrast in these photos, IF they are stars, it's probably because the aperature was set at a very low number allowing a lot of light to come in for a quick shutter speed.

Of course, I could be absolutely wrong, because doing that would generally cause a lower depth of field, but I can take a picture from earth adjusting these levels and get images that show stars and those that don't.

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...

a reply to: smurfy

Sounds a lot like the Surveyor method:

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

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