Jud McCranie wrote:
On 8 Jul 2006 14:13:20 -0700, "
wrote:

No, I just want an answer to my question, why are there no stars in the
background during the recent ISS/Shuttle space walk ??
I mean the cameras of today must be 10 thousand humdred million times
better than the cameras of Apollo, why no stars ??

The same reason that there aren't stars in the Apollo photographs. The
camera is set to photograph something pretty bright, and the stars are
very dim in comparison.
---

That old NASA/Apollo infomercial argument about "no stars" being the
norm wasn't valid in the beginning, and it certainly isn't valid now.

The dynamic range(DR) of their Kodak film was in fact sufficient to
have included a dozen or more items besides the moon and Earth, and of
those CCD images of today are offering a good 32 fold better yet at
having extended that DR capability that should knock our socks off with
having unavoidably included a few stars, with some of those best
performing CCDs being capable of offering better than a 100:1 improved
DR ratio.

Therefore, it is not the "10 thousand hundred million times better than
the cameras of Apollo" as stipulated by "Secret237", but none the less
it's an impressive improvement, though still offering somewhat less
pixel density or population per mm capability since the positive
transparency/slide film can be scanned down to something below a micron
which is typically 10 fold better off than what the average camera lens
can manage to transfer.

Without having involved a narrow visual spectrum bandpass and/or at
least that of a near-UV and UV cutoff applied to the lens, the likes of
the bluish Spica and especially the far-blue, violet, near-UV and the
considerable UV-a spectrum worth of those Sirius stars are going to be
unavoidably showing up in those unfiltered images. So, besides the
obvious planets that should have been available, such as in
relationship to the physically dark lunar horizon; where the heck were
the likes of Spica or Sirius throughout those NASA/Apollo missions?

Besides a number of such stars, Venus should have been downright pesky
in at least two of the Apollo missions, as unavoidably getting into
several of those unfiltered Kodak moments. Seems that you'd also have
wanted to have intentionally included the rather nearby impressive
likes of Venus as could only have been included as easily photographed
from the moon.

After all, the average terrain of our moon is worthy of something
similar to the likes of sooty coal, of 0.07 albedo and otherwise
typically being illuminated at something less than a 45 degree of that
raw solar influx (actually of most missions being accomplished shortly
after sunrise, thus perhaps as little as 10 degrees above the horizon),
of which unless looking towards the direction of the sun is going to
photograph at a much darker amount of surface reflected light, and as
only having been recorded as darker yet because of their having used a
polarised optical element, whereas earthshine that's capable of being
as illuminating as 76 fold greater intensity than moonshine should have
given a few faint but otherwise easily recorded shadows within those
primary solar shadows.

Those well published images via "moonpans" of a typically 55%
reflective lunar terrain that's rather similar to that of a guano
island that has been artificially dusted with the likes of portland
cement and cornmeal plus the available guano itself is not exactly what
our moon should have looked like. The red white and blue American
flags as having been Xenon lamp spectrum illuminated is yet another
rather obvious photographic error that shouldn't need any further
argument.

Moon and Spica (first magnitude of 0.98)
http://pages.prodigy.net/pam.orman/j...051225_02.html
Date: December 25, 2005
Time: 6:35 a.m. MST
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Camera: Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR on fixed tripod
Film: Fuji Provia 100F slide
Focal length: 600 mm (200mm lens with 3X tele-extender
Apertu f/11 (effective f/32)
Exposure time: approximately 1/2 second
Scanner: Nikon Coolscan LS-2000 (cropped slightly)

Sirius at a visual and terrestrial atmospheric filtered magnitude of
-1.42 is essentially a humanly visual 2.44 magnitude brighter item than
Spica, and if that same look-see at Sirius were having been
photographed as from the physically dark lunar deck without optical
filters (as NASA/Apollo claimed) is where it would be easily have been
recorded as 10+ times again as vibrant as Spica would have recorded
upon the very same Kodak film exposure, that's actually relatively
sensitive to the near-UV and UV-a. Sirius being a G2V as opposed to
the somewhat wussy Spica and of it's B1V spectrum is once again where
that lack of an atmosphere and thus having absolutely no attenuated
near-UV or UV-a as photon filtering is a pretty damn hard factor to
ignore, which should therefore have offered a rather impressive
vibrance of Sirius to behold, and otherwise unavoidable as to keeping
such pesky bright stars continually out of frame. Although, it's only
so much worse off for the task of having to keep the likes of other
nearby planets and especially that of the 80+% albedo of Venus out of
each and every one of those frames, and I believe we're talking about
thousands upon thousands of such frames as being a rather neat trick.

You see, or rather it's of what you folks simply don't humanly see,
whereas the unfiltered Kodak eye does in fact perceive as it
photographically should have recorded upon that Kodak film, a wider
than human spectrum that's actually extremely sensitive to the near-UV
and UV-a part of the starshine spectrums (including that one of our own
star), as being of what really counts the most if taking those
unfiltered pictures from the naked moon. Of those bluish bright stars
like Spica and even the photographically brighter Sirius would each
have delivered quite the added illumination benefit if those items were
being photographed as optically unfiltered and from our physically dark
and atmospherically naked moon.

Would you folks like to see some other examples of our moon as having
been photographed along with other planets and stars, or would you care
to discuss the gamma and hard-X-ray aspects of our naked moon that's
offering worse off radiation dosage than what the worse of our Van
Allen belts have to offer?
-
Brad Guth