ApolloHoax.net
Apollo Discussions => The Hoax Theory => Topic started by: Commander Cody on November 11, 2012, 03:02:38 PM
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
-
Capturing stars on photographic film requires a long exposure. The cameras were set to take pictures of a brightly lit landscape, which required a very short exposure - too short to pick up stars.
If the astronauts had used long exposures, the landscape would have been badly overexposed and the pictures would have been a big mess. Remember, the mission was to survey the Moon - not take pictures of stars.
That's the same reason why pictures of the ISS or the shuttle in orbit, to name but two examples, do not show stars in the pictures.
Try it yourself - go out on a clear night when you can see lot of stars and take a snapshot. Your camera won't image any stars.
http://www.clavius.org/photoexp.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#stars
-
It's not the technology of the time. The same limitations on photographic results apply today. Stars are dim objects, especially when compared to sunlit scenes. You can't capture both on film at once.
-
Thank you this is really helpful.
-
The only way you could get stars in the sky and a properly exposed lunar terrain would be with a double exposure: masking out the lunar terrain, exposing for stars, then taking a much shorter exposure of the terrain.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
There are photos of stars taken from the moon. Apollo 16 had a special camera to take images in the far ultraviolet, a range of light that is not visible on earth.
-
There are photos of stars taken from the moon. Apollo 16 had a special camera to take images in the far ultraviolet, a range of light that is not visible on earth.
Some long exposure shots of the solar corona taken from Lunar orbit also show stars (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo15/html/as15-98-13311.html).
-
Thank you this is really helpful.
Our absolute pleasure. But may I suggest that you really should first research this stuff for yourself (Google it, go to Clavius.org, search this site) and see if you can find the answers *before* posting so many questions on what are very basic and well-explained concepts...
You see, CommanderC, there are some very wicked/deluded people (thankfully only one or two, but they use multiple identities) who often come here and pretend to be genuinely asking these sort of questions, when really they are not who they seem, and are just here to troll. So we tend to be a little wary of newcomers!
Anyway, assuming you are genuinely doing an assessment (note the correct spelling..), may I ask what the assessment is about? Is the assessor happy for you to simply ask questions at a forum, or would s/he prefer you did some more rigorous research?
And do you believe that Apollo happened, as history records it? If not, may I then ask what sources of 'information' you have used so far, and how you found them?
Just as a general comment, may I point out that one thing that you will find out about the very silly people who think Apollo was faked, is that they all have an astonishing inability to think beyond their own limited experience.. Let me give you a hint on what I mean by that, in the hope that *you* might do some of the required thinking. On this 'star visibility' topic, ask yourself a few basic questions.
1. What, in terms of being able to see (or photograph) stars, is different about the lunar environment compared to viewing stars on Earth? Why can't you see stars in daylight on Earth? (that isn't as stupid as it might sound..)
2. Is there a way to quantify and analyse those differences?
3. Is there any way to *usefully* simulate the differences, here on Earth?
4. Without a full knowledge of Q1, and without properly answering Q2 and Q3, would anything you might simply guess, be of any validity whatsoever?
Hint, the answer to Q.4 is NO. But the typical Apollo denier very ignorantly thinks otherwise - please do not become one of them...
BTW, similar questions can be asked about things like the dust on footpads - see if you can spot why Apollo deniers get caught out by their inability to understand the lunar environment and why 'odd' things seem to happen. They are only odd if you don't (or don't want to) understand.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
There are photos of stars taken from the moon. Apollo 16 had a special camera to take images in the far ultraviolet, a range of light that is not visible on earth.
Here are some of the photos of stars (http://www3.telus.net/summa/faruv/index.htm), taken from the lunar surface. Note that the exposure times vary from several seconds to several minutes, whereas the images of the lunar surface, taken by the astronauts used an exposure time of 1/250th of a second.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
Can you see stars in the daytime?
Sirius is the brightest star in the nighttime sky, yet it is still literally billions of times dimmer than the Sun. Why would you expect stars to show up in daytime photographs?
-
Can you see stars in the daytime?
Sirius is the brightest star in the nighttime sky, yet it is still literally billions of times dimmer than the Sun. Why would you expect stars to show up in daytime photographs?
Funny you should mention that. Just last week I found myself outdoors a little while before dawn. As is my habit,, I looked for and found Venus. Jupiter was also easy to find. Sirius was still visible. Using it as a guide, I also found Rigel & Betelgeuse. Interestingly, I could not see Aldebaraan despite its proximity to Jupiter. This established a lower limit* to what magnitude I could see. As the sky brightened, I first lost Betelguese (due, I think to the low contrast between it and the pink sky) then Rigel. Sirius was extremely faint, and I couldn't look away without losing it.
Unfortunately, I had to cut the experiment short before sunrise. In the past when I have done this experiment, I have been able to see Mars and Saturn with my naked eye for a little while after sunrise. In both cases, I eventually had to look away and could not regain them in the brightening sky.
It's a fun exercise to try if you ever find yourself outside before dawn with time to kill. 8)
*Upper limit? Goddamn Pogson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Robert_Pogson)...
-
Heres a photo that I took of the Singapore skyline a good few years ago. It was taken in the early hours of the morning.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/Gadfium/Website%20images/23112007-1651-01.jpg)
See the almost complete lack of stars in the sky, even though the sky is clear (there's a couple of clouds scudding by but the rest of the sky is clear)?
The exposure length? 13 seconds.
Now do you wonder why you can't see stars in shots taken from the surface of the Moon in the bright light of the Lunar morning, with the Sun reflecting off the Lunar surface and astronaut's suits? Especially when you consider the shutter speed (fractions of a second).
Anyone who has ever used a camera will know instinctively why there's no stars in the Lunar photos. I find it almost unbelieveable that the "no stars" claptrap keeps getting regurgitated time after time.
-
What was the f-stop and sensor speed?
-
Venus at brightest: -4.9. That's bright.
Venus, full: -3.8.
Jupiter: -1.6 to -2.94.
Sirius: -1.46
Rigel: +0.12
Betelgeuse: +0.3 to +1.2
Aldebaran: +0.75 to +0.95
That probably explains a lot.
-
Anyone who has ever used a camera will know instinctively why there's no stars in the Lunar photos. I find it almost unbelieveable that the "no stars" claptrap keeps getting regurgitated time after time.
Dealing with photographic images is something I do on a daily basis at work.
If I saw images like this in the Apollo record...
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o35/smartcooky99/LunarStars.png)
...instead of like this...
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o35/smartcooky99/LunarNoStars.png)
...the alarm bells would start ringing very loudly indeed.
-
What about, say, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/AS11-36-5311.jpg
:-)
-
What was the f-stop and sensor speed?
f5.6 and ISO100
-
What about, say, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/AS11-36-5311.jpg
:-)
I see the constellation Urion in that photo.
-
I made this sequence of images of the moon in answer the same question, in order to show the difference in exposure time needed :
-
What about, say, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/AS11-36-5311.jpg
:-)
<tinfoil hat>
How do you know those specks aren't debris from the SIV-B?
</tinfoil hat>
-
I made this sequence of images of the moon in answer the same question, in order to show the difference in exposure time needed :
That is brilliant!
-
Can't say much for your tripod. ;^p
-
Can't say much for your tripod. ;^p
Tripod? I just stood very still
Holding a heavy camera steady for a several second exposure is rather hard.
-
Can't say much for your tripod. ;^p
Tripod? I just stood very still
Holding a heavy camera steady for a several second exposure is rather hard.
Sorry. I'm a knob sometimes.
-
Ok sorry for annoying you ChrLz I did not mean to. :'( I am actually 13 so give me a little space for my spelling error. I am actually really good at spelling (two years ahead) but I could not fit an extra s in because there was not enough space to do so. But with the word astronaut that was an error because I did not know how to spell it. I have researched other websites so I am more informed on the subject. I will not ask any more questions unless completely necessary.
By the way I am not lying and I actually believe that we did land on the moon so I got nothing against you. Sorry for the unintentional inconvenience it will not occur again. ;D
-
Just as a trial, I looked for stars tonight while at the Paul McCartney concert. It was in the downtown baseball park with the roof open and the night was clear and the air was relatively dry, for Houston. We were sitting pretty far away and higher than the light bars on the stage. With the house light on, not a star could be seen. When the lights dimmed for the start of the show, two stars became visible in the west. That was the best view of the night. About half the time the stage lights were so bright, I lost those two stars. At some point they set, and the sky was completely starless thereafter.
BTW McCartney still rocks.
-
Yeah their are also less stars from the naked eye on earth as the pollution and light fogs it up. If you go to a farm with only a family living there you can be absolutely spectacular sights!
-
Ok sorry for annoying you ChrLz I did not mean to.
You didn't annoy me, CC. It takes a whole lot more than that - I was just digging a little to ensure you weren't another incarnation of our most frequent troll.. I hope there are no hard feelings.
I am actually 13 so give me a little space for my spelling error.
No problem!
I am actually really good at spelling (two years ahead) but I could not fit an extra s in because there was not enough space to do so.
May I suggest you could have dropped the "This sign up is .." and the college bit? Just "For my Assessment in Science" would have worked nicely.. I'm still interested in your assessment - why not tell us a bit more about it?
But with the word astronaut that was an error because I did not know how to spell it.
Unfortunately that particular misspelling (or one very like it) is often used by trolls to insult astronauts, so you can probably see why I was suspicious..
I have researched other websites so I am more informed on the subject. I will not ask any more questions unless completely necessary.
That's great to hear - but don't hesitate to to ask questions if you are finding something difficult to understand.
The most important thing of all is to realise that the lunar environment that the astronauts were in was VERY, VERY different to Earth, and some things that you might think are either strange or indicators of fakery, are in fact the result of the nature of that environment.
In the case of this visibility of stars issue.. earlier i asked you to think about why you can't see stars in daytime on earth. That question is absolutely key to understanding what is going on. You may also wish to investigate things like the camera exposures required to image stars, and compare them to the camera settings required for daylit scenery (which is what were used for the majority of the Apollo images - it's all documented).
After you've done all that, you may begin to wonder (correctly) how anyone could seriously put up websites claiming that the lack of visible stars in Apollo images is a pointer to fakery. It is in fact just a pointer to complete ignorance - indeed the nature of those images (in this and many other aspects) proves that they were taken in an airless, fully sunlit, 1/6G environment. AKA the Moon.
By the way I am not lying and I actually believe that we did land on the moon so I got nothing against you. Sorry for the unintentional inconvenience it will not occur again.
Like I said, please don't be put off posting here - if you come with an open mind and a willingness to learn, there are many very highly educated and experienced folks who can help you sort it all out. And then there's me.. :D
-
Ok sorry for annoying you ChrLz I did not mean to. :'( I am actually 13 so give me a little space for my spelling error.
Cody, don't worry about it. If you feel you've had a harsh response to your questions here, then we apologise for it, but we have had any number of hoax believers come on and start just as you did: by firing endless questions at us. Initially they claim to be just asking, but they soon turn out to have an agenda and rapidly turn hostile, and it becomes clear that they throw out question after question after question so that they can avoid being pinned down in an actual discussion. Our most recent example immediately diverted from discussion of the issues to complaining about how he was treated as he provoked us more and more while avoiding actually discussing Apollo.
Everyone here would love to discuss Apollo. Everyone here would be more than happy to help people understand it better. Everyone here will gladly answer questions on the subject. When we get annoyed is when people don't take the answers in or engage in the discussion.
What is really sad here, and no relfection on you whatsoever, is that it is really hard to tell the difference between the writing style of a teenager asking questions out of curiosity and an adult hoax believer!
I have researched other websites so I am more informed on the subject. I will not ask any more questions unless completely necessary.
Good work. You are welcome to ask questions here if there are things you need help with. As I said, we'll gladly answer. Unfortunately, alarm bells start ringing for us when a whole load of questions appear, especially with time in between them and not much indication of acknowledgement of the answers already given.
So ask away. You'll find a lot of enthusiatic people willing to discuss the subject here.
-
Yeah [there] are also less stars from the naked eye on earth as the pollution and light fogs it up. If you go to a farm with only a family living there you can be absolutely spectacular sights!
Not, generally, during the day.
-
There is nothing wrong with an honest question, one the actively seeks an answer.
-
I'll also add that non-hoax questions are best asked in the Reality of Apollo forum, to avoid confusion. We just assume that new posts in the Hoax Theory area are from hoax believers.
http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?board=4.0
Please feel free to restart any threads that have been sidetracked.
-
Let me emphasize what Jason Thompson just said. Many hoax claims start with what sound like perfectly reasonable questions. "Why weren't stars visible on the moon?" is a perfectly reasonable question. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with asking questions like those provided you are willing to listen to and honestly consider the answers.
We don't expect you to take the answers on faith, either, just "because we said so" or because we're older and more experienced, with many of us having actually worked in space flight. We're perfectly happy to explain our answers and even have you question them until you understand and see for yourself why they're right. In fact we enjoy doing that. I think we're all repressed teachers or something here.
So go ahead, ask any question you like. As long as you're willing to listen to our answers, we'll be happy to explain them.
-
There is nothing wrong with an honest question, one the actively seeks an answer.
Indeed. I like to say that the most distinguishing characteristic of a hoaxer is that they use questions as weapons, not as tools to learn answers.
-
IMO, this question starts out (and progresses) something like this....
1. On earth, the sky at night is black, and we can see stars.
2. On the moon the sky is also black, so why don't Apollo photographs show stars.
3. Since we can't see stars in the Apollo photographs, they must be fakes.
The first problem here us that Q1 is not comparable with Q2. They are not asking about the same criteria; Q1 is about what you can see with the unaided eye and Q2 is asking about what you can see in a photograph of what you are looking at with the unaided eye. These are two very different questions.
If you take a photograph at night on the earth with the kind of exposure times and aperture settings and film speed (really important that last bit) that the astronauts used to take their photographs on the moon, the chances are that you will not see any stars in your photographs.
Also, taking a photograph at night on the earth, (dark landscape + dark sky) does not present the same conditions as taking a photograph on the Moon (bright landscape + dark sky). The nearest equivalent is, as mentioned earlier, is taking a photograph inside a well lit stadium
Here is a shot from our local rugby stadium.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Trafalgar_Park.jpg)
Its taken around 7pm on a clear, cold late winter's night, from the north-east end of the stadium looking south-west. The lights in the gaps beyond the southern stand on left and right are street and house lights on the nearby foothills to the south-west. While walking to the stadium, I could clearly see stars over those foothills, but once inside, stars were not visible, even when I looked straight up.
Another thing that has to be taken into consideration is the human eye. In concert with the human brain, it is a far more sophisticated imaging device that any film camera that has ever been designed by man. Apollo used film cameras; crude and rudimentary image capture devices by comparison with the human eye. The feature of the human eye that really impacts on this issue is that of "dynamic contrast", the ability to "expose" different parts of the image at different levels according to brightness.
Have a look at this photograph
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o35/smartcooky99/dynamic1.jpg)
1. What the camera sees: This is about the best result a skilled
photographer could achieve, using available light (in the absence
of any way to reflect light into the child's face)
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o35/smartcooky99/dynamic4.jpg)
2. Set the camera to expose for the child's face, and the background
will burn out due to over exposure
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o35/smartcooky99/dynamic3.jpg)
3. Set the camera to expose for the background, and the child's face
will be very dark due to under-exposure.
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o35/smartcooky99/dynamic2.jpg)
4. What the eye sees: This was taken with a digital camera,
and manipulated in Photoshop by adjusting the tonal range in the
shadow/highlight filter. If there was no reflected into the face of the girl,
there is no way that a film camera could take this shot.
This is the sophistication of the human eye. Dynamic contrast control gives it the ability to lower exposure on bright areas of an image, and increase exposure in darker areas. This is something that no film camera could do, not even the Hasselblad medium format cameras that were used on Apollo.
-
This is a photo I took in Dubai. Notice the blank sky except for Jupiter next to the building under construction on the left.
-
I found this screen capture from the Firefly episode called "The Train Job":
(http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19300000/the-train-job-firefly-19330271-800-450.jpg)
link (http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19300000/the-train-job-firefly-19330271-800-450.jpg)
This shot was filmed outside, at night. That's the Moon behind Mal's head (our moon, not a CGI one inserted later). Note that it is over-exposed because it's lit by the Sun, whereas the camera is set to show the ground lit by the vehicle's headlights. Thus, we can readily see that ground lit by incandescent lamps is nowhere near as bright as ground lit by the Sun (assuming the same albedo of the ground - in fact the surface of the Earth (at least, in Southern California where this scene was filmed) is much more reflective than the Moon).
If this camera were on the surface of the Moon with the same settings, the ground would be hopelessly over-exposed. Yet notice that there are no stars visible in the above image. Even with cameras set to record a lighted nighttime scene, the stars are too faint to register. When photographing a scene on sunlit ground (such as the surface of the Moon), there is simply no way that any stars will appear.
-
Missed the edit window. Here's the pic:
(http://i47.tinypic.com/kcgwfr.png)
-
This is the sophistication of the human eye. Dynamic contrast control gives it the ability to lower exposure on bright areas of an image, and increase exposure in darker areas. This is something that no film camera could do
I think I know why, too. And it's not because the eye is superior to any camera but because it is considerably worse.
More specifically, the eye has only a very small field of view with full spatial and color resolution, the fovea. We have the illusion of seeing everything in front of us because our eyes are constantly darting about the scene, updating the image we keep in our brains. As our eyes move they can refocus and change iris openings, thus dynamically adapting to each part of the picture before updating that part of it in our brains' "frame buffer".
We can now do something like this with cameras and image stacking by taking multiple shots of the scene with a range of exposures and/or focus settings and taking the best of each image for the final result.
As an aside, this illusion we have of continuously seeing the entire scene in front of us is the basis of countless magic tricks.
-
You don't need a great camera when you got excellent post-processing in your wet-ware.
-
This is the sophistication of the human eye. Dynamic contrast control gives it the ability to lower exposure on bright areas of an image, and increase exposure in darker areas. This is something that no film camera could do
I think I know why, too. And it's not because the eye is superior to any camera but because it is considerably worse.
More specifically, the eye has only a very small field of view with full spatial and color resolution, the fovea. We have the illusion of seeing everything in front of us because our eyes are constantly darting about the scene, updating the image we keep in our brains. As our eyes move they can refocus and change iris openings, thus dynamically adapting to each part of the picture before updating that part of it in our brains' "frame buffer".
We can now do something like this with cameras and image stacking by taking multiple shots of the scene with a range of exposures and/or focus settings and taking the best of each image for the final result.
As an aside, this illusion we have of continuously seeing the entire scene in front of us is the basis of countless magic tricks.
You are talking about digital cameras. The Apollo programme used medium format film cameras with low (by modern standards) ASA rating.
Perhaps it would be more true to say the the eye+brain combination is more sophisticated than any film camera.
In particular, the brain can adjust the input levels from different areas of the retina depending on how bright that part of the image is. Its why I can be outside in the garden on a bright sunny day and see into the shady parts and the full sunlight at the same time.
No combination of camera+film can ever do this.
On the Apollo moonshots, the shutter speed was set to 1/250, at ƒ5.6 for objects in shadow and ƒ11 for objects in sunlight. They sometimes used exposure bracketing to ensure good results. The film was probably 125 ASA (at most it would be 160 and that was about the fastest film available at that time). At that film speed, shutter speed ƒ-stop setting, you are never going to capture stars.
EDIT: I should add that there were no actual ASA ratings films at that time. The ASA rating system didn't come in until the early 1980's. They would have rated the special thin emulsion Kodak films used in Apollo in H&D, Scheiners or Weston numbers, but IIRC the fastest commercially available film speed in the 1960s/70s was the equivalent of about 160 ASA.
-
You are talking about digital cameras. The Apollo programme used medium format film cameras with low (by modern standards) ASA rating.
Perhaps it would be more true to say the the eye+brain combination is more sophisticated than any film camera.
You can do exposure and focus stacking with film; just scan it into digital form and treat like digital photographs. But sure, I know what you mean.
My point is simply that modern computers can now do semi-automatically with cameras what the brain does automatically and very quickly with the eye, so the camera+computer combination can now get much closer to the eye+brain combination.
In particular, the brain can adjust the input levels from different areas of the retina depending on how bright that part of the image is.
Exactly. I.e., the brain automatically "stacks" imagery from the eye into a composite image in the brain. The system has the extra advantage that low-resolution peripheral vision can, in real time, detect motion and notify the brain which then redirects the eye to update the changing parts of the image. The brain's attention is also drawn to that area of the scene. (This mechanism is again exploited by magicians.)
The video compression scheme MPEG-2 works somewhat similarly in that most frames consist of changes to previously sent frames, avoiding having to resend the entire frame every 1/30 or 1/24 sec. Here the camera gathers everything and the compressor throws away the redundant parts, while the eye/brain bandwidth is much lower (i.e., the eye itself throws away the redundant information) and is compensated for with a very fast servo mechanism that lets the brain optimize the use of that limited bandwidth.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried a "remote vision" system where the position of the viewer's eye is detected and transmitted to the camera and image compressor to transmit that part of the scene in high resolution, with automatic focus and exposure adaptation. The rest of the scene would be sent in low-resolution black-and-white, simulating peripheral rod vision. The main problem would be in minimizing round-trip control lag. The brain can move the eyes very quickly.
EDIT: I should add that there were no actual ASA ratings films at that time. The ASA rating system didn't come in until the early 1980's.
Are you sure about this? I first got into photography in 1968-1969, and we were most definitely using ASA numbers. (ASA = American Standards Association, former name of ANSI.) Tri-X was ASA 400, Plus-X was ASA 125, Panatomic-X was ASA 32, and so on.
There were also DIN (Deutsches Institut fuer Forschung) numbers, which were logarithmic (essentially decibels), and I am pretty sure the film boxes gave both. It was later (1974) that ASA/DIN numbers were made ISO numbers, e.g. ISO 100/21.
-
EDIT: I should add that there were no actual ASA ratings films at that time. The ASA rating system didn't come in until the early 1980's.
Are you sure about this? I first got into photography in 1968-1969, and we were most definitely using ASA numbers. (ASA = American Standards Association, former name of ANSI.) Tri-X was ASA 400, Plus-X was ASA 125, Panatomic-X was ASA 32, and so on.
There were also DIN (Deutsches Institut fuer Forschung) numbers, which were logarithmic (essentially decibels), and I am pretty sure the film boxes gave both. It was later (1974) that ASA/DIN numbers were made ISO numbers, e.g. ISO 100/21.
I agree. When I was learning photography in 1975, I was shooting with ASA 100 & ASA 400 film.
-
Modern computers and digital photography simply weren't available in 1969. I am trying to keep to the question about why no stars were seen in the Apollo photos. In doing that, we have to keep within the restrictions of the technology of that time.
Image stacking is really a fancy name for what photographers call "bracketing". Effectively you calculate the optimum exposure, then hedge your bets by taking a shot at one stop either side of that, e.g. if you worked out that 1/250s @ ƒ8 was optimum, you would take one at ƒ5.6 and another at ƒ11. However, you can't bracket every shot as its very wasteful of film. This would be especially so on Apollo where carrying three times as much film as really needed was not really an option (weight is gold). As I said earlier , they shot 1/250th @ ƒ5.6 in shadow and ƒ11 in sunlight, and only used exposure bracketing for important shots to ensure good results
EDIT: I should add that there were no actual ASA ratings films at that time. The ASA rating system didn't come in until the early 1980's.
Are you sure about this? I first got into photography in 1968-1969, and we were most definitely using ASA numbers. (ASA = American Standards Association, former name of ANSI.) Tri-X was ASA 400, Plus-X was ASA 125, Panatomic-X was ASA 32, and so on.
There were also DIN (Deutsches Institut fuer Forschung) numbers, which were logarithmic (essentially decibels), and I am pretty sure the film boxes gave both. It was later (1974) that ASA/DIN numbers were made ISO numbers, e.g. ISO 100/21.
I should have said that it ASA wasn't a universally accepted standard until the early 1980s
Hurter and Driffield did the original research of film speed (they gave their name to the H&D curve) the late 19th century. A number of different speed systems based on H&D's work appeared in the next several years until the 20s when the logarithmic DIN system came into being. It was based on max contrast and fixed image density
In about 1938 Kodak identified problems with the DIN system (which I won't detail here, except to say that the whole thing fell apart when dealing with very contrasty negatives)> remember we are talking about Black & White film here, not colour, and certainly not C-41 colour which didn't become a commercial reality until the early 1970s.
This problem with film contrast was the reason that ASA (a linear system) was introduced. ASA and DIN were merged into ISO around 1940, using a fixed density + fixed gamma assessment system. and that raises another problem for us. In trying to compare the systems, we need to understand the ASA rating for films then are not the same as the ASA ratings we use now. The systems used various different speed assessment criteria so you can't really make any valid comparisons
AIUI Kodak were asked by NASA to develop special thin films emulsions for the Apollo missions, but the problem with print film than was that the C-22 process used at the time (the forerunner to C-41) was low contrast with a thick film substrate, so it was decided to use transparency film for the colour photography. Kodak had just introduced "Ektachrome" to eventually replace their existing "Kodachrome" transparency film. From memory, Apollo used several different type of film, but the most common ones were;
Kodak Panatomic-X fine-grained, 80 ISO, b/w film
Kodak Ektachrome, 160 ISO transparency film
Kodak 2475 Recording film - b/w super high speed 16,000 ISO (very grainy)
AFAIK, no colour print film was ever carried on Apollo flights
-
EDIT: I should add that there were no actual ASA ratings films at that time. The ASA rating system didn't come in until the early 1980's.
Are you sure about this? I first got into photography in 1968-1969, and we were most definitely using ASA numbers. (ASA = American Standards Association, former name of ANSI.) Tri-X was ASA 400, Plus-X was ASA 125, Panatomic-X was ASA 32, and so on.
There were also DIN (Deutsches Institut fuer Forschung) numbers, which were logarithmic (essentially decibels), and I am pretty sure the film boxes gave both. It was later (1974) that ASA/DIN numbers were made ISO numbers, e.g. ISO 100/21.
I agree. When I was learning photography in 1975, I was shooting with ASA 100 & ASA 400 film.
It's been a long time, but the fastest daylight color film available at the time was Ektachrome at ASA160, in 35mm, 70mm, 120 and 220 variants. There was a tungsten variant, rated at ASA125, for shooting with 3200k lighting - I think the cyan layer was beefed up in the 160 film to compensate, resulting in the lower rating. There was also a 64 ASA version for finer grain, but with medium and large format cameras, 160 was just fine (although 4x5 shots with 64 were just unbelievable!).
IIRC, Agfa was in direct line with Kodak and Fuji wasn't really a player until the mid-70's. I think Ilford and Ciba were along the lines of "we've heard of them".
Ektachrome could be "pushed" to higher ratings, just like monochrome films like Tri-X (which I used to shoot at 1600 ASA), but you took major chances with color balance and grain. Kodak basically said you were on your own if you did it.
The big advantage to using a moderately fast transparency film like Ektachrome was that it was a direct positive image. Unlike Ektacolor (professional) and Kodacolor (still a damned good film), which used a negative, Ektachrome was a WYSIWIG system where the image wasn't subject to interpretation of the processor. And since the dyes were built into the film, unlike Kodachrome, the possibility of a disaster in the lab was further reduced (although I never heard of a lab screwing up in processing Kodachrome, not for nothing was there a disclaimer on every box of film sold limiting liability to the film and lab costs).
-
Modern computers and digital photography simply weren't available in 1969.
I understand. But the fun of these discussions is that they so often go off on interesting and insightful tangents that don't necessarily have to do with Apollo.
Image stacking is really a fancy name for what photographers call "bracketing".
It's more than that. Stacking is combining the best sections from the focus- or exposure-bracketed shots into a single, synthetic shot. In simple bracketing, you pick the best shot and throw the rest away.
<esoteric analogy>In my field of digital mobile radio communications it is standard practice, at least for the technology (CDMA) I helped develop, for base stations to combine the raw signals from several antennas before demodulation to reduce multipath fading. This is maximal ratio combining and it's something like photographic stacking. This is an enhancement of an earlier and still very common technique called voting where you pick the best signal at any moment from several independent antenna/receiver/demodulators and ignore the others. This is like photographic bracketing. </esoteric analogy>
I should have said that it ASA wasn't a universally accepted standard until the early 1980s
Well, "ASA" does mean "American Standards Association" so that sort of goes without saying (except for the not-insignifcant number who think nothing outside America matters, but...)
According to the Wikipedia article, the separate ASA and DIN numbers were merged into "ISO ASA/DIN" in 1974.
AIUI Kodak were asked by NASA to develop special thin films emulsions for the Apollo missions
That's their ESTAR base, Kodak's trade name for polyester -- aka DuPont's Mylar. The emulsion is actually the same, but the base (which is nearly all of the film's thickness) can be much thinner because polyester is far stronger than cellulose acetate. It also has a much wider temperature range, something the Apollo deniers who think the film would have instantly frozen or melted ought to know.
Kodak points out an interesting drawback to ESTAR. It's so strong that a film jam can damage a camera or projector. Cellulose acetate breaks first. (I'm reminded of the old joke in electronics repair about the expensive transistor that blew to protect the fuse.)
Kodak had just introduced "Ektachrome" to eventually replace their existing "Kodachrome" transparency film
I think Ektachrome had been around for a while before Apollo; my dad shot a lot of slide film in the late 1950s and early 1960s and a lot of it is Ektachrome. Wikipedia says it was developed in the early 1940s.
I was somewhat surprised that NASA chose Ektachrome as it's notorious for fading, with images going red due to fading of the cyan dye. Kodachrome is much more stable precisely because the dyes are added during processing, not constructed by adding to components already in the film. But I guess this problem can be (and has been) solved with storage at low temperatures. And as you say, Ektachrome had the advantages of higher speed, wider exposure latitude and much simpler processing that's harder to screw up.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
In case it hasn't been put this way, in the simplest terms, as far as films of the '60s, '70s and later were concerned:
A fully-sunlit scene is between 30,000 times and 130,000 times brighter than any reasonably-good scene showing stars.
Most standard films just cannot handle that sort of lighting ratio and nor can most standard electronic cameras. They can usually handle only a lighting ratio of about 11 f-stops or 1024:1, which is quite sufficient for most photos taken on or near Earth or its moon. We can shoot stars and we can photograph sunlit scenes, but not both at once.
With 125 ISO film, the normal full-sunlight exposure is 1/125th of a second @ f16. It's called the Sunny 16 rule. A photo which shows bright, recognisable constellations technically requires an exposure of about ten seconds @ f2.8 with the same film, but in practice another factor called reciprocity failure crops up with long exposures, and even longer ones such as 20 or 30 seconds are sometimes required.
This old post at the CosmoQuest forum (http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php/6040-Fox-Special-rescreening-in-NZ-24-June-2003?p=102903#post102903) (formerly BAUT and Bad Astronomy) shows the differences between some of those exposure settings.
My maths has never been too good, but I once worked out that if you got out as far as Pluto in its average orbit around the sun, it would be too dim for you to get a sharp hand-held full-sun photo of it on standard film, but if you took a sharp and properly-exposed shot of it and included plenty of sky, you still wouldn't see most stars in the photo.
I'll leave it to the experts to prove that right or wrong.
P.S.
It has been wonderful to see more than two people talking about films and related technical matters of the Apollo era. I don't think I've ever seen that before.
My particular technical expertise revolved around simplifying Ansel Adams and Fred Picker's experiments with the Zone System and passing on the results to anyone else who was keen to listen and to do their own simple experiments. Due to my poor maths I made the very fortunate mistake of starting with a contrast of 11 zones, 0 to 10, which required halving the film speed and gave spectacular black-and-white prints which had an almost-3D look that few colour prints had, and made other photographers say, "Wow! How did you do that?"
The system gave repeatable results, required only a two or three films and a few hours to perfect, and cut out the need for any fancy enlarging computer or time- and money-wasting test prints. I used a stick with numbers on it beside the enlarger and used to think I was printing badly if it took 11 sheets of paper to get ten top-notch prints.
Even Ansel Adams, through his own experiments, later came around to my way of thinking about 11 zones. And damnit, a few months ago I found the article he wrote and put it away so carefully that I can't find it right now.
-
Stacking is combining the best sections from the focus- or exposure-bracketed shots into a single, synthetic shot. In simple bracketing, you pick the best shot and throw the rest away.
Right. In film photography, especially with finicky emulsions like Ektachrome, your metered exposure may not be the best exposure. Hence you trust your meter to get you into the ballpark, then bracket to see where the nuance falls. And it's a full-frame proposition. If you wanted selective exposure control you had to dodge and burn during printing, which is obviated in Ektachrome. In the late 1980s I shot quite a bit on Agfa and Fuji reversal films and got pretty good at not having to bracket in order to get good dynamic range.
This is maximal ratio combining and it's something like photographic stacking.
Yes, the best HDR algorithms derive the weights (i.e., the respective alpha channels) from the luminosity ratios in the constituent images.
That's their ESTAR base, Kodak's trade name for polyester -- aka DuPont's Mylar. The emulsion is actually the same, but the base (which is nearly all of the film's thickness) can be much thinner because polyester is far stronger than cellulose acetate. It also has a much wider temperature range, something the Apollo deniers who think the film would have instantly frozen or melted ought to know.
The rest of the story is that ESTAR was developed first for Project CORONA and was quite secret until NASA had similar needs and the decision was made to declassify ESTAR but not to publicly announce its secret use. ESTAR was developed for use in space, and has since been adaptable to other applications.
Kodak points out an interesting drawback to ESTAR. It's so strong that a film jam can damage a camera or projector.
Well, yes and no. The thicknesses of ESTAR provided commercially up until the virtual demise of Kodak's film business was substantially thicker than that provided for CORONA and Apollo. When the museum I volunteer at was preparing an aerial photography exhibit in connection with their acquisition of an SR-71 Blackbird, we located several CORONA-era cameras, one of which was still loaded with (lightstruck) original ESTAR film. It is very thin, and -- these days -- quite fragile. The next time I'm up there, I'll see if I can either obtain a sample or measure it with a micrometer.
I think Ektachrome had been around for a while before Apollo; my dad shot a lot of slide film in the late 1950s and early 1960s and a lot of it is Ektachrome.
The "Ektachrome" name refers to a number of related emulsions. I most recently shot on E-6. The Apollo photography was done on E-3. Your dad may have shot on E-3 or one of the earlier emulsions/processes.
I was somewhat surprised that NASA chose Ektachrome as it's notorious for fading, with images going red due to fading of the cyan dye.
That has happened. Michael Light has inspected the camera originals and noted significant shifts toward magenta in several rolls. This is notwithstanding exemplary storage and handling (but see below).
And as you say, Ektachrome had the advantages of higher speed, wider exposure latitude and much simpler processing that's harder to screw up.
Sadly some of it was screwed up. While the E-3 process is straightforward, it also affords expert lab technicians more latitude in processing to correct problems, and some of these methods were applied to some Apollo rolls and has affected their longevity. Again I recall Michael Light often touches on these in his lectures. The plan was to select a film that didn't require expert photographers, but did require expert lab techs, the theory being that the darkroom wizards would jump in and do their thing if the astronaut-photographers screwed up.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
Cody, most students of the hoax who claim they are serious focus on the fact that the astronauts tend to seldom discuss stars, discount them, not that they are not in photos.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
Cody, most students of the hoax who claim they are serious focus on the fact that the astronauts tend to seldom discuss stars, discount them, not that they are not in photos.
[citation needed]
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
Cody, most students of the hoax who claim they are serious focus on the fact that the astronauts tend to seldom discuss stars, discount them, not that they are not in photos.
[citation needed]
Citation from the students or the astronauts. As far as the latter goes, check out the famous armstrong comments. We all know them. As far as the students go, you agree or do not. It is subjective. Guess you could pole HBs and ask them about this and how much time they spend on the subject as well. I think it is solid such as something subjective like this can be. That perspective certainly shows a greater level of understanding than the case wherein the HB says, "where are the stars in the pics?"
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
Cody, most students of the hoax who claim they are serious focus on the fact that the astronauts tend to seldom discuss stars, discount them, not that they are not in photos.
Incorrect....on both the statement and its inherent claim. Surely you aren't going to start with the Armstrong-Moore interview again are you?
http://www.last-word.com/content_handling/show_tree/tree_id/4500.html
Go back.....read the first reply. Your subsequent reply to it was scarily obsessive.
-
Why are there no stars seen on the pictures of the moon?
mabye it was the technology at that time or is their another reason? :o ???Please explain.
Cody, most students of the hoax who claim they are serious focus on the fact that the astronauts tend to seldom discuss stars, discount them, not that they are not in photos.
Incorrect....on both the statement and its inherent claim. Surely you aren't going to start with the Armstrong-Moore interview again are you?
http://www.last-word.com/content_handling/show_tree/tree_id/4500.html
Go back.....read the first reply. Your subsequent reply to it was scarily obsessive.
No big stake in it. My point was simply no stars in the pics is no point, a non starter.