Stars in the sky

[cjameshuff]

There's both light and dark specks, and scratches, lines, at least one hair, and fogging. The light speck is right on a vertical scratch, and blends into it in a way that makes me suspect it's an abrasion.

Higher res version:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS14/64/9057.jpg

[ChrLz]

Almost certainly a scratch in the film - if you examine that high res scan you'll see other similar 'dings', eg one at lower left (coordinates X=342,Y=3592).  That one clearly cannot be scene detail as that area of the LRV is way out of focus, yet the 'ding' is sharp..

It could probably be checked by identifying the direction and time and using 'planetarium-ism', as was done for the Venus discoveries..  but I'm too lazy time challenged.. 

[Jason Thompson]

The high res version of the picture on the Apollo Image Gallery shows it to have a distinct shape. That combined with the fact that it appears very bright white on a section of the picture that is somewhat washed out by what is presumably dust catching the sunlight suggests it is not a star, since no star would be that bright to show up on the film through the diffuse light from the dust, I suspect.

As far as i know the only thing that has been conclusively identified in an Apollo image is Venus, and that only appeared as a small dot just visible on a high-res image. Since Venus is significantly brighter than any star, I would say it is higly unlikely that any white spot on any Apollo Hasselblad image is a star.

[raven]

That might not be a star, but these are.

[Trebor]

That might not be a star, but these are.

Yep, those are exactly how stars come out when taken with a hand held camera.
Nice little matching squiggles.

[Noldi400]

A certain Apollo astronaut - I'll try to avoid libel here by just saying that it was someone intensely interested in the paranormal - has been quoted as saying that his life was transformed by the "sight of  [the] incredible heavenly view of the stars", which were "magnificent", and described them as being "ten times brighter than when observed from Earth."

When he was asked about Neil Armstrong's statement that the stars were not visible during the cislunar coast, his comment was "He [Armstrong] didn't know what he was talking about!".

So, whaddaya think? Has this individual gone totally crackers, or what?

[Echnaton]

A certain Apollo astronaut - I'll try to avoid libel here by just saying that it was someone intensely interested in the paranormal - has been quoted as saying that his life was transformed by the "sight of  [the] incredible heavenly view of the stars", which were "magnificent", and described them as being "ten times brighter than when observed from Earth."

When he was asked about Neil Armstrong's statement that the stars were not visible during the cislunar coast, his comment was "He [Armstrong] didn't know what he was talking about!".

So, whaddaya think? Has this individual gone totally crackers, or what?

Is this attributed to him anywhere outside of Aulis? 

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

A certain Apollo astronaut - I'll try to avoid libel here by just saying that it was someone intensely interested in the paranormal - has been quoted as saying that his life was transformed by the "sight of  [the] incredible heavenly view of the stars", which were "magnificent", and described them as being "ten times brighter than when observed from Earth."

When he was asked about Neil Armstrong's statement that the stars were not visible during the cislunar coast, his comment was "He [Armstrong] didn't know what he was talking about!".

So, whaddaya think? Has this individual gone totally crackers, or what?

I saw that individual give a lecture at Autographica in 2011 and 2012, and he came across as a woo. He talked about being telepathically healed of of a kidney ailment by a teenage boy, how the Roswell incident was real and his investigations into the paranormal. A friend suggested he might becoming senile, but looking at his history he's been like that all his life. Deke said he was an odd man, but was a damn good pilot and that he wasn't interested in his beliefs as long as he could his job.

[onebigmonkey]

I have, on many occasions, challenged hoax believers to go to their nearest supermarket car park and take a photograph of stars.

I have also posted photographs I have taken of stars and challenged them to produce the same. Sometimes I tell them they are 20-30 second exposures, sometimes I don't. Likewise photographs of the Moon I have taken showing no stars - 'go take a photo like this and see how many stars you can see in it'. Sometimes I'm polite about it, sometimes not.

They never do.

Odd that.

On the subject of astronauts and stars, in a talk I attended given by Charlie Duke he explained it very simply: it's broad daylight. I know there are complexities to the argument, but essentially, that's it!

[Noldi400]

A certain Apollo astronaut - I'll try to avoid libel here by just saying that it was someone intensely interested in the paranormal - has been quoted as saying that his life was transformed by the "sight of  [the] incredible heavenly view of the stars", which were "magnificent", and described them as being "ten times brighter than when observed from Earth."

When he was asked about Neil Armstrong's statement that the stars were not visible during the cislunar coast, his comment was "He [Armstrong] didn't know what he was talking about!".

So, whaddaya think? Has this individual gone totally crackers, or what?

Is this attributed to him anywhere outside of Aulis?

Not that I've found, not for this specific occasion.

There is a transcript from an interview on NBC Dateline, from 1996, where he speaks about " Looking at the moon, looking at the sun, looking at beyond the earth to these billions and billions of brilliant stars and galaxies".

[Echnaton]

Not that I've found, not for this specific occasion.

The funny thing is that it the only thing I've read on Aulis that rings true.

[raven]

Ironically, I was made aware of this* picture by a conspiracy theorist, taken from LEO.
Yes, it shows stars, but look at the moon.
It's so over exposed that Earthshine lights up the night portion almost like day and the day side is so over exposed it looks like the moon is wearing a toque**!
*Warning: Big Image
**Canadian term for thick woolen caps worn in cold weather.

[Noldi400]

Ironically, I was made aware of this* picture by a conspiracy theorist, taken from LEO.
Yes, it shows stars, but look at the moon.
It's so over exposed that Earthshine lights up the night portion almost like day and the day side is so over exposed it looks like the moon is wearing a toque**!
*Warning: Big Image
**Canadian term for thick woolen caps worn in cold weather.

I could be just displaying my ignorance here, but is the black curve along the bottom of the aurora not the nightside horizon of the Earth? And if it is, why are there "stars" visible between the camera and what should be the Earth?  All those white dots look more like some kind of artifact to me.

Or am I just looking at it wrong?

And isn't it one of the most consistent traits of HBs that remarkably selective hearing/sight/comprehension they all seem to have?  No one AFAIK, has denied being able to see or photograph stars while in the shadow of a planet. (I thought Neil Armstrong was perfectly clear on that point 'way back at the infamous press conference they love to quote mine.)

[Tanalia]

NASA source for the image: ISS013-E-69635

Aurora are generally high in the atmosphere, the photo appears is catching it from the side, and you see stars through the atmosphere below.  The earth would be off the bottom.  Compare with this photo (particularly the left side) from the Wkik: Aurora entry.

[ChrLz]

Hate to offer a contrary view.. but I don't think they are stars...  I have a few reasons to back up that wild guess, but am happy to be corrected..

First up, that's a fairly wide field of view and shows plenty of sky.. can anyone point out a known constellation/asterism?

Second, they just don't look like stars to me - the very large number of one or two pixel spots of reasonably similar brightness and almost all of very similar neutral colours..?  Zooming it up shows some quite bad jpeg compression artefacts, btw, so that may explain why they mostly look similar..

Third, I threw a large crop of that image that only contained the 'stars', at Astrometry.net, and ... it FAILED.  I would expect such an image to be an easy match.  (If that link doesn't work, I'm happy to post the crop I used so the failure can be verified or my/their methodology criticised..!)

Fourth, I took a look at a nearby image, namely ...934.jpg and I don't think those are stars either for pretty obvious reasons...

I'm guessing this a poor quality (or over-heated) sensor showing lots of hot pixels - maybe from bad dark frame subtraction and/or worsened by post-proc or something?  Hey, maybe they were in the SAA, and being highly irradiated..