Post by sts60 on Sept 7, 2011 10:57:41 GMT -4
Prompted by a posting by davidc/rocky/FatFreddy88 over on JREF, where he quoted someone saying there were no images of stars in any NASA catalog of spaceborne imaging, I wrote off to NSSDC about getting some images from the Stellar Mapping Camera carried on the later Apollo missions.
I don't think they've had a request for this in decades, but they courteously sampled some of the film for me electronically. I'm trying to decipher what I'm looking at - there's two strips of multiple images, each looking as if the Sun was in the lower left washing out much of the image, then with specks of light here and there (stars? flaws? dirt in the scanner?), and no identification other than a Braille-like line of dots between each image.
I've written back trying to get some contextual clues, and am looking around when I have time for an actual catalog of images with times/orbital information/etc.
I'll let you know what I hear, and when I have a chance I'll post some manageable versions of the images provided so far. I have a hard time believing each image actually had the Sun in the same spot when exposed, but until I know the timing and can guess at the vehicle orientation can't say what's going on.
I don't think they've had a request for this in decades, but they courteously sampled some of the film for me electronically. I'm trying to decipher what I'm looking at - there's two strips of multiple images, each looking as if the Sun was in the lower left washing out much of the image, then with specks of light here and there (stars? flaws? dirt in the scanner?), and no identification other than a Braille-like line of dots between each image.
I've written back trying to get some contextual clues, and am looking around when I have time for an actual catalog of images with times/orbital information/etc.
I'll let you know what I hear, and when I have a chance I'll post some manageable versions of the images provided so far. I have a hard time believing each image actually had the Sun in the same spot when exposed, but until I know the timing and can guess at the vehicle orientation can't say what's going on.