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

[DataCable]

The ALSJ cite you as the original source and that one is based on yours

Yeah, caught that after re-reading it a few times.

[onebigmonkey]

Just added an additional bit to the Apollo 15 section.

Initially I didn't bother with the final solar corona session, but then I realised a couple of things. AS15-98-13377 shows Mercury and a couple of bright stars - a planet is always good for pinpointing a moment in time!

It also shows Mercury in exactly the right position in relation to the sunrise given the orbital path it was following, which is pretty damned cool! Any other position on the lunar terminator and the position of the three objects visible in the image in relation to the solar corona just would not have been the same. Any other time and the position of Mercury would have been different.

I love it when accidental discoveries like this still completely support (and re-enforce) the Apollo narrative

[Trebor]

Thanks for this Monkey, It has been invaluable.
The thread should be pinned for future reference

For that matter there has been a lot of good info in a lot of threads which have been lost in the archives having a section where they can be pinned for future reference would be handy.

[onebigmonkey]

Thank you trebor - nice to know it's actually been read lol.

As a little side project to add on to this part of my site I am collecting Apollo astronaut quotes describing stars, planets, constellations and so on. I'm not bothering with navigation stuff, just ones that describe the view.

I'm going through the mission transcript and only have Apollo 16 and 17 to do.

If anyone knows any good ones I'd be happy to add them (I already have Michael Collins' well known ones).

[ka9q]

Are there really that many? We know they never saw them in the daytime except through the optics, and even at night the cabin lights and lack of dark adaptation made it rather difficult to see much.

Even through the optics it was often difficult to see stars on Apollo, and even though the stars in the navigation catalog were almost all 2nd magnitude or brighter (Polaris is an example of a 2nd magnitude star).

Alpha Centauri (Rigel Kent), though quite bright, was omitted probably because it's a binary.

[onebigmonkey]

Even discounting the ones that are obviously related to navigation (which I'm not using unless they have a nice turn of phrase) there are a fair few, mostly from cislunar space.

There are a few stubborn idiots who take the Apollo 11 press conference as a blanket statement of absolute truth: no astronaut ever saw stars. I'm demonstrating otherwise.

I may or may not use this one from Apollo 16:

08 11 14 07 LMP You know, Pete, if you took this view that y'all just saw of the Moon and put in a movie, everybody would say you're faking it. It doesn't look like that. And it's just - you can't see any stars, just pure blackness

[Miss Vocalcord]

So because they couldn't see any stars they created all these maps so they couldn't use them to navigate on them?
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-AOTNavStarsDetents.html

[Bryanpoprobson]

There are a few stubborn idiots who take the Apollo 11 press conference as a blanket statement of absolute truth: no astronaut ever saw stars. I'm demonstrating otherwise.

I've always liked the quote from Armstrong when entering lunar orbit, that answers all the questions..

071:59:20 Armstrong: Houston, it's been a real change for us. Now we're able to see stars again and recognize constellations for the first time on the trip. It's - the sky is full of stars. Just like the night side of Earth. But all the way here, we've only been able to see stars occasionally and perhaps through the monocular, but not recognize any star patterns.

[onebigmonkey]

So because they couldn't see any stars they created all these maps so they couldn't use them to navigate on them?
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-AOTNavStarsDetents.html

I've already anticipated the response:

"Yeah well, they had to mention them every so often otherwise people would think they were faking it..."

[ka9q]

So because they couldn't see any stars they created all these maps so they couldn't use them to navigate on them?

It's not clear they could actually see many constellations through the optics; a lot of them complained that the view was quite dim.

When periodically realigning the platform to compensate for the inevitable drift, a procedure called "P52", they'd have the computer slew the spacecraft and/or telescope to what it though was the right position for the catalog star being used. Since the drift was small, this would invariably put the star within the field of view so the astronaut only had to make a minor correction to center it. He didn't have to go searching for the star in the constellations.

[JayUtah]

The CM sextant had a 1X finder scope.  You were supposed to use that to block out extraneous light to see constellations, patterns, etc. from the LEB.  They practiced this on the roof at MIT, with the actual guidance-system mockup and astronomers confirming their constellation identification.  (The system was an integrated assembly, the IMU and computer down below and the optics above, in a massively robust frame.)

The CM optics were slewed by the computer, and you were supposed to use the 20X sextant in any of various modes to "mark" the actual position of the star, whereupon the computer can pick off the actual sextant slew angles for the star and update the REFSMMAT.

[onebigmonkey]

OK, for better or worse:

http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html

And thanks Miss Vocalcord for that link to the ALSJ page, I hadn't seen it and it was a useful addition.

Any typos are mostly errors in copying from badly scanned pdfs.

[AstroBrant]

OK, for better or worse:

http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html

And thanks Miss Vocalcord for that link to the ALSJ page, I hadn't seen it and it was a useful addition.

Any typos are mostly errors in copying from badly scanned pdfs.

Hey, thanks for that link. I'm bookmarking it. And I appreciate how much work you must have had to do to get those.

Edit: I just went back and browsed your web page. You have some very cool and unique stuff on there!

[onebigmonkey]

OK, for better or worse:

http://onebigmonkey.comoj.com/obm/staquotes.html

And thanks Miss Vocalcord for that link to the ALSJ page, I hadn't seen it and it was a useful addition.

Any typos are mostly errors in copying from badly scanned pdfs.

Hey, thanks for that link. I'm bookmarking it. And I appreciate how much work you must have had to do to get those.

ctrl+f, next, next, next

[onebigmonkey]

OK, so I was obsessing re-examining some photos for stars and stuff and came across this from Apollo 12: AS12-51-7588

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS12/51/7588.jpg

It is referred to in the photo index as a 'Star shot'.

The preceding images in the magazine are labelled as from the Solar Eclipse, but they clearly aren't as you can see lens flares, but it's possible they were taken close that event.

I can find no references to a 'star shot' anywhere in missions transcripts and reports.

What sparked my curiosity is that along with the usual blue dots that mark image blemishes are several lighter  dots in the top half of the image. I've increased the dpi and cropped it for this version:



The obvious candidates for one of the dots is likely to be either Venus, Mercury or Jupiter. I think Mercury is only likely if the Earth is actually occluding the sun. Unfortunately my only software is Stellarium, which I can use to place the viewpoint on either the Moon or Earth, but not in between (unless someone can tell me otherwise).

The image was taken after TEI. and probably much later in the ride home given how thin the sliver of Earth is in AS12-51-7587.

Venus at about 15:00 on the 24th of November 1969 looks promising, but pareidolia is a terrible curse.

So, anyone care to have a go? Are they just image blemishes? Beautifully lit urine crystals? Reflected panel lights? Or are they planets/stars?