My God, it's full of stars...

[onebigmonkey]

A poster on collectspace.com was asking about 'missing' Apollo magazines and identified several from Apollo 16.

I managed to find 2 of them, taken by Nikons with an f1.2 55mm lens for low light and earthshine photography, and they are here http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/gallery/apollo/16

Much of what is in there is (naturally enough) underexposed, but there are some gems - including many images of stars. Yes, actual stars!!

So far I've only managed to pin one of the images down to anything definite, AS16-129-20063:



compared with a Stellarium view:



Naturally there are those who will claim that you could have taken these photographs on Earth, but the magazines also show images of the moon's surface, and I intend to demonstrate that these mostly oblique views could not have been taken from Earth - either because they are of the far side or because they are oblique views that a terrestrial telescope would show as vertical.

Feel free to join in

The one I really want to nail down is this one, AS16-129-20076:



Like the previous one, there are several similar views taken at different exposure settings.

I also managed to find a 'missing' Apollo 13 magazine (number 93), which has images of Earth taken at around 06:30 on 17/04/70 as confirmed by the satellite meteorology record!

[onebigmonkey]

The 2nd photo can actually be combined with another one to produce a wider view:



I need to get out more don't I?

[Noldi400]

I wonder why mags 127 & 129 aren't in the ALSJ... Do you have any on how and under what conditions these were taken?  Maybe those were the mags that Mattingly retrieved from the metric & panoramic cameras during the coast back to Earth.

[raven]

I wonder why mags 127 & 129 aren't in the ALSJ... Do you have any on how and under what conditions these were taken?  Maybe those were the mags that Mattingly retrieved from the metric & panoramic cameras during the coast back to Earth.

Pretty sure no, as those are catalogued differently.

[Mag40]

The 2nd photo can actually be combined with another one to produce a wider view

Is the bright blob Venus? How many hours to even identify that area of sky in the opening picture, you must have amazing patience or a real familiarity with the stars.

[Dalhousie]

How many hours to even identify that area of sky in the opening picture, you must have amazing patience or a real familiarity with the stars.

Well, it's about the most instantly recognisable bits of sky that there is, the Southern Cross and the pointers.  At least I recognised it instantly.

[Obviousman]

Yep - Southern Cross.

[smartcooky]

How many hours to even identify that area of sky in the opening picture, you must have amazing patience or a real familiarity with the stars.

Any Kiwi or Aussie will recognise that star group immediately...

[ka9q]

Well, it's about the most instantly recognisable bits of sky that there is, the Southern Cross and the pointers.  At least I recognised it instantly.

Ah, that's Rigel Kent, not Rigel. How could two very different stars have such confusing names?

I'd say Orion is probably the most instantly recognizable constellation, if only because it's visible in both hemispheres. After that I'd say Ursa Major, because most of the world's population lives up here in the north.

[Daggerstab]

You can put the star fields in astrometry.net to get them recognized. Even if you don't want to bother with the software itself, they have a bot on Flickr.

[ajv]

The one I really want to nail down is this one, AS16-129-20076:

I'm a rank amateur at using stellarium (I hadn't even loaded on my current machine until just now). But I was playing around with the idea of looking for Venus during Apollo 16 and I came up with:



Stellarium time set to 1972-04-26 12:00:00 UTC.

It that's a match it looks like they photographed Venus, Mars, and Saturn in a single frame.

[Dalhousie]

Well, it's about the most instantly recognisable bits of sky that there is, the Southern Cross and the pointers.  At least I recognised it instantly.

Ah, that's Rigel Kent, not Rigel. How could two very different stars have such confusing names?

I'd say Orion is probably the most instantly recognizable constellation, if only because it's visible in both hemispheres. After that I'd say Ursa Major, because most of the world's population lives up here in the north.

The Southern Cross is visible in both hemispheres. 
Rigel Kent is not the official star name, its Alpha Centauri.
It was the first constellation I learned, and I was born and brought up in the northern hemisphere.
There might be a more people in the northern hemisphere, but it is still a familiar and instantly recognisable feature of the sky to about three billion of us!

[Dalhousie]

Any Kiwi or Aussie will recognise that star group immediately...

Also Papua New Guinea



Samoa



Brazil

[ka9q]

The Southern Cross is visible in both hemispheres.

It is? I live in San Diego (latitude 33N) but I never saw it until I traveled to Australia for the first time. It's at declination 60S, which is never above the horizon for anybody farther north than 30N. Same with Alpha Centauri, which is at about the same declination.

The only parts of the USA south of 30 N are the state of Hawaii, peninsular Florida and the southern parts of Texas and Louisiana.

Rigel Kent is not the official star name, its Alpha Centauri.

Exactly why, when I saw that diagram with only the "Rigel" part showing, I thought of Rigel rather than Alpha Centauri.

[smartcooky]

More like 25°N, which means there is nowhere in the continental US that you can see it.The southern tip of Florida is the southernmost part of the USA, at 25° 15'

If you're north of the equator but south of latitude 25°, Hawaii and parts of North Africa, you can still see it. It can be seen in Hawaii if you look south in May & June. It will appear to stand on the southern horizon at its zenith.