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Post by fattydash on Jul 6, 2011 23:18:07 GMT -4
For Bob B.
Why is it that Armstrong said no stars, no planets, but on the other hand, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton say in their book stars are easy to see from the surface of the moon? Of course Slayton was on the earth so presumably he was informed of this by his legion of space walkers. Why the contradiction Bob B.?
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Jul 6, 2011 23:25:24 GMT -4
For Bob B. Why is it that Armstrong said no stars, no planets, but on the other hand, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton say in their book stars are easy to see from the surface of the moon. Of course Slayton was on the earth so presumably he was informed of this by his legion of space walkers. Why the contradiction Bob B.? Ask them. Oh, that's right, they're dead. Sorry, I don't know why their book would say such a thing.
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Post by fattydash on Jul 6, 2011 23:27:31 GMT -4
Is there a reasonable explanation for the contradiction, Armstrong saying no stars were visible, Slayton/Shepard saying they were easy to see?
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Post by laurel on Jul 6, 2011 23:29:37 GMT -4
Shepard spending significantly more time on the lunar surface than Armstrong and having more time to look for stars, perhaps?
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Post by Count Zero on Jul 6, 2011 23:31:49 GMT -4
For Count Zero. Why is it that in their book "Moon Shot" Deke Slayton and Alan Shepard state clearly that it was easy for moonwalkers to see stars from the surface of the moon? The book had a coauthor as well. Citation, please. Specifically, the page number where it says it was "easy" to see stars. Now then, you said this book had three authors. Usually, for a book like this the astronauts tell their stories to the professional writer, who writes them up and shows them to the guys for approval. So if the book says it was "easy" (a contention yet to be proven), who wrote that? Slayton did not go to the Moon. Shepard we know photographed Venus. However, he had been standing in the shadow of the LM, facing the lander for several minutes. He had time and the conditions to get at least partially dark-adapted. If the writer asked Shepard if he could see stars, He could have truthfully answered, "Sure, I took pictures!" and the writer could assume that Shepard meant it was "easy" and wrote it that way. Shepard, for whatever reason, might not have bothered to correct or clarify the text. Now then, once again, if direct, personal experience shows us that it can be difficult (if not impossible) to see stars when looking out the window of a lighted room, or standing in a well-lighted area such as a parking lot or a stadium, or if sun-lit objects are in the field of view, then why would you expect astronauts in space to see stars unless they deliberately took time and actions to dark-adapt their eyes?
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on Jul 6, 2011 23:39:36 GMT -4
Is there a reasonable explanation for the contradiction, Armstrong saying no stars were visible, Slayton/Shepard saying they were easy to see? Unless you can provide a citation and the exact text of the quote, I'm not going to accept that Slayton/Shepard said that because I haven't read it for myself. Furthermore, I'm not going to speculate about what they were referring to without having all the facts regarding the exact circumstances under which they claimed stars could be seen. As I said previously, there are some circumstances where stars could be seen and some where they couldn't. Armstrong and Shepard/Slayton could be talking about different circumstance, and hence, there would be no contradiction. If we can't establish the exact circumstances that both are referring to, it is impossible to reconcile their comments and foolish to try.
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Post by ka9q on Jul 6, 2011 23:50:22 GMT -4
And this is indeed true. An observatory on the moon avoids the atmospheric turbulence that degrades viewing from the earth's surface. It can also see large non-visible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that are of strong scientific interest but blocked by the earth's atmosphere.
Apollo 16 carried a far ultraviolet telescope to the lunar surface that successfully photographed the earth and several other celestial objects. Since far UV cannot penetrate the earth's atmosphere, those pictures prove they really were taken from the moon -- especially since the earth appears with the correct size and stellar background, and keeping in mind that in 1972 there were no ultraviolet sky surveys saying how bright each of those stars should appear to be.
But the fact that a telescope could operate from the surface of the moon, during daytime, standing in the shadow of the LM and looking through a long tube to block and absorb stray light from the lunar surface, hardly says that astronauts standing on the lunar surface, wearing helmets with protective filters, should have seen stars with the naked eye. No more than the existence (and success) of the Hubble Space Telescope in earth orbit means that astronauts in earth orbit should easily see stars on the earth's day side.
Surely I shouldn't have to explain to a medical doctor the difference between the unaided human eye and a custom-built optical device specifically designed to operate in space or on the lunar surface, should I?
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Post by Count Zero on Jul 6, 2011 23:55:32 GMT -4
The exposure times for those photographs ranged from 30 seconds to 30 minutes.
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Post by scooter on Jul 7, 2011 0:06:55 GMT -4
When was it that Mr Armstrong said that he looked for stars and couldn't see any?
I personally think he had lots more interesting things to look at, and many more important things to do than look at/for stars. They had very serious time constraints on that first landing EVA. The later crews, not so much, with a lot more surface time available.
Frankly, being on the surface of the Moon...kicking material undisturbed for eons...maybe sighting a star or two just didn't register as important enough to even remember. Just my conjecture, which I readily admit to.
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Post by fattydash on Jul 7, 2011 0:07:43 GMT -4
"Moon Shot" was authored by Deke Slayton and Alan Shepard. Coauthor was Jay Barbree. These individuals, the three of them are responsible for the book's contents, every word. As Jay Barbree did not walk on the moon, I would suggest that if he physically penned the following lines, it was based on what Alan Shepard told him as regards the details of Shepard's own moonwalking experience and of course Barbree's writing would be also dependent on details as provided by Deke Slayton given what Slayton had been told by the moonwalkers upon their return to Earth. Barbree himself did not walk on the moon, and I do not believe he was granted a license to make anything up.
Neil Armstrong wrote the introduction to this book and he strongly endorses all 3, Slayton, Shepard and Barbree.
The relevant quote is as follows. It comes from location 3594 on the Kindle ebook version. I have a paper copy, though do not have the book with me so cannot give you a page.
Per astronaut Shepard and Slayton, Head of Astronaut Selection;
" "Where were the stars?" the myth believers then asked. The cameras that NASA sent to the moon had to use short exposure times to take pictures of the bright lunar surface and the moonwalkers' white spacesuits. Stars' images, easily seen by the moonwalkers, were too faint and underexposed to be seen as they are in photographs taken from space shuttles and the International Space Station. "
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Post by scooter on Jul 7, 2011 0:14:08 GMT -4
[quote author=fattydash board=theories thread=3198 post=91497 time=1310011663Per astronaut Shepard and Slayton, Head of Astronaut Selection;
" "Where were the stars?" the myth believers then asked. The cameras that NASA sent to the moon had to use short exposure times to take pictures of the bright lunar surface and the moonwalkers' white spacesuits. Stars' images, easily seen by the moonwalkers, were too faint and underexposed to be seen as they are in photographs taken from space shuttles and the International Space Station. "[/quote]
is there a problem with this statement?
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Post by fattydash on Jul 7, 2011 0:18:41 GMT -4
Scooter, fair enough, but the point is, one would expect to see lots of stars. Certainly many astronomers do. They write about star visibility on the moon often times as a way to emphasize why it is that an atmosphere prevents us from seeing stars in the day. Check out "Lunar Science for Kids". The NASA scientists that run that web site say stars would be more easilty seen than on the earth, meaning on the earth at night.
No one was expecting Armstrong to go on and on about seeing this or that star, but the fact that he claims to have seen none at all, well for many people, that goes against their expectation.
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Post by fattydash on Jul 7, 2011 0:27:20 GMT -4
Nothing wrong. The interesting part of it, if one can call it that, is Shepard's and Slayton's stating here that stars' images were easily seen by moonwalkers. It contradicts Armstrong. They cannot both be correct. If Slayton and Shepard say stars' images were easily seen by moonwalkers, then when Patrick Moore asked Neil Armstrong about stars at the 1969 post Apollo 11 press conference and then again in a one on one BBC interview in 1970, Armstrong would have said, "yeah I saw some stars, Venus was bright. But you know Patrick, I was busy setting up all this equipment and so forth, I really could not have cared less". But he does not say that. In the BBC interview, he says the only visible objects in the lunar skay are the sun and the Earth, no planets, no stars, nothing else. If you have not checked out that video, youtube search "Neil Armstrong, Patrick Moore, BBC interview, 1970" and it will come right up. The star question is the first question posed and answered.
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Post by scooter on Jul 7, 2011 0:28:22 GMT -4
"Easily seen..."
OK...do astronomers have to deal with light scattering from a bright surface? No, they observe at night, preferably from a dark location, through an eyepiece. I think the "easily seen" was an exaggeration. I'm quite sure, given a proper location and the ability to block out the relatively bright surface reflection, that stars would be visible. Would they be visible while going about the surface work routine...I doubt it.
I think you're going on about it like this book was a technical debrief, accurate to a gnat's butt. Some use Aldrin's "testimony" on a Sesame Street episode about all the stars he saw while on the Moon in much the same way...I'll put it down to literary license.
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Post by fattydash on Jul 7, 2011 0:37:12 GMT -4
Scooter, you are missing the context of the statement by Slayton and Shepard.
Slayton and Shepard are saying, look, all of these HB clowns don't know squat from squat. They keep asking where IN THE PHOTOS are the stars. Well, the stars were there, and the moonwalkers could easily see them. The stars were just not photographed for those reasons pointed out to all of us countless times before.
The quote is from a section in "Moon Shot" addressing hoax concerns. The part here in particular is intended to debunk the "there are no stars in the photos argument". It does so in part by saying, the stars were there. The astronauts, the moonwalkers, saw them easily.
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