I get this question a lot by many people when we share pictures taken by astronauts on social media: “Why cannot you see any stars in the ...
I get this question a lot by many people when we share pictures taken by
astronauts on social media: “Why cannot you see any stars in the
pictures that astronauts capture from space?”
Well the answer is simple; NASA researchers explain that “the cameras are incapable of capturing the light released by the stars since the bright sunlight hitting the surrounding surface washes out the light from the stars.”
Experts at PhysLink.com explain as:
“The reason why no or very little stars can be seen is because of the Earth. The Earth, when lit by the Sun, is many thousands times brighter than the stars around it. As a result the Earth is so bright that it swamps out most if not all of the stars. The reason that the stars do not show up on the film is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure. Our eyes are a lot more sensitive to light than photographic film.”
So that’s why American astronaut Reid Wiseman’s newest space snapshot, taken with a extended exposure, displays that, yes, of course there are stars in the space:
Experts at PhysLink.com explain as:
“The reason why no or very little stars can be seen is because of the Earth. The Earth, when lit by the Sun, is many thousands times brighter than the stars around it. As a result the Earth is so bright that it swamps out most if not all of the stars. The reason that the stars do not show up on the film is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure. Our eyes are a lot more sensitive to light than photographic film.”
So that’s why American astronaut Reid Wiseman’s newest space
snapshot, taken with a extended exposure, displays that, yes, of course
there are stars in the space:
“I’ve never seen a photo like that. Was the background beyond Earth ‘photoshopped’ to remove background stars, or is that angle so narrow and the background space so coincidentally ’empty’ that no visible stars are there to be seen?”
Our colleague D.C. Agle from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with the Juno science team to provide this answer:
“The exposure time for the image — it’s actually three images: red, green and blue — was too short for any stars to be seen. Earth and the Moon were bright enough that a short-duration exposure was all that was needed. The brighter an object is, the shorter the exposure time required to capture an image of it. It’s similar to why you don’t really see stars in Apollo photos from the moon – the subjects being photographed were so much brighter than the background stars that the exposures weren’t long enough to capture the stars.
Here are two examples from the Cassini mission to Saturn showing long exposures that did capture stars. In both cases, the stars show up as streaks because of the relatively long exposures required to capture a good image of the moons.
+ Tethys in Eclipse
+ Iapetus by Saturn Shine
Cassini stays locked onto its target and actually turns very slightly during the exposures. Meanwhile the stars move slowly across the sky, and their images are smeared out as streaks.
Interestingly, the Voyager spacecraft took this remarkable image from about 7 million miles away in 1977. The difference is that Voyager was a survey and flyby mission, and its cameras were like long-range telescopes. Juno is an orbiter that will get extremely close to Jupiter every 11 days, and its camera is designed for that. It will take amazing wide-angle views from only a few thousand miles above the cloud tops. So that’s why Juno’s camera has a field of view about 130 times wider than Voyager, and thus why Eath seems so much smaller even though Voyager was a little farther away when it took its Earth-moon image.”
Well the answer is simple; NASA researchers explain that “the cameras are incapable of capturing the light released by the stars since the bright sunlight hitting the surrounding surface washes out the light from the stars.”
“The reason why no or very little stars can be seen is because of the Earth. The Earth, when lit by the Sun, is many thousands times brighter than the stars around it. As a result the Earth is so bright that it swamps out most if not all of the stars. The reason that the stars do not show up on the film is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure. Our eyes are a lot more sensitive to light than photographic film.”
So that’s why American astronaut Reid Wiseman’s newest space snapshot, taken with a extended exposure, displays that, yes, of course there are stars in the space:
Experts at PhysLink.com explain as:
“The reason why no or very little stars can be seen is because of the Earth. The Earth, when lit by the Sun, is many thousands times brighter than the stars around it. As a result the Earth is so bright that it swamps out most if not all of the stars. The reason that the stars do not show up on the film is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure. Our eyes are a lot more sensitive to light than photographic film.”
“I’ve never seen a photo like that. Was the background beyond Earth ‘photoshopped’ to remove background stars, or is that angle so narrow and the background space so coincidentally ’empty’ that no visible stars are there to be seen?”
Our colleague D.C. Agle from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with the Juno science team to provide this answer:
“The exposure time for the image — it’s actually three images: red, green and blue — was too short for any stars to be seen. Earth and the Moon were bright enough that a short-duration exposure was all that was needed. The brighter an object is, the shorter the exposure time required to capture an image of it. It’s similar to why you don’t really see stars in Apollo photos from the moon – the subjects being photographed were so much brighter than the background stars that the exposures weren’t long enough to capture the stars.
Here are two examples from the Cassini mission to Saturn showing long exposures that did capture stars. In both cases, the stars show up as streaks because of the relatively long exposures required to capture a good image of the moons.
+ Tethys in Eclipse
+ Iapetus by Saturn Shine
Cassini stays locked onto its target and actually turns very slightly during the exposures. Meanwhile the stars move slowly across the sky, and their images are smeared out as streaks.
Interestingly, the Voyager spacecraft took this remarkable image from about 7 million miles away in 1977. The difference is that Voyager was a survey and flyby mission, and its cameras were like long-range telescopes. Juno is an orbiter that will get extremely close to Jupiter every 11 days, and its camera is designed for that. It will take amazing wide-angle views from only a few thousand miles above the cloud tops. So that’s why Juno’s camera has a field of view about 130 times wider than Voyager, and thus why Eath seems so much smaller even though Voyager was a little farther away when it took its Earth-moon image.”
