Missing Planetoid

[Kiwi]

grandlunar1980 said:

Does Venus really show up in the Apollo photos?

When at its brightest, a few weeks before and after superior conjunction with the sun, Venus can be seen with the naked eye all day if you know where to look. I once pointed it out next to the moon to a bus-load of school kids, and this was close to noon. I've also shown it to local children by lining it up with a flagpole, so if it's a naked-eye sight in blue sky I see no reason why it couldn't be photographed in black sky with a "Sunny-16" exposure.

Then again, he did argue that a shuttle image that showed an auroa shows stars, even though the "stars" are cleary below the horizon of Earth (he claims the Earth itself isn't visible at all).

The only shuttle picture I have of an aurora is a time exposure with stars visible -- foreground clouds are streaked because of the shuttle's motion. The clouds look as it they have been shot in daylight, but it's a night-side shot under moonlight. A longer exposure, if it shows the stars streaked too, could place some of them below the earth's horizon. Auroras often require exposures that are certainly long enough to record stars -- they are too faint to show in a sunlight exposure.

On the other hand, the "stars" you see below the horizon could be artificial lights on earth. My photo shows a large patch of light underneath, and partly obscured by, the clouds.

[Bob B.]

grandlunar1980 said:

Does Venus really show up in the Apollo photos?

I ask, because during my "talk" with HBer GreenMagoo, he made a big deal about Venus showing up in the images, yet no stars.

Consider that Venus is 3 magnitudes brighter than the brightest star, which means it is 16 times as luminous. So if Venus is just barely visible in a photograph, there is no reason to expect to see the stars that are many times fainter.

grandlunar1980 said:

Then again, he did argue that a shuttle image that showed an auroa shows stars, even though the "stars" are cleary below the horizon of Earth (he claims the Earth itself isn't visible at all).

There are Shuttle aurora photos that show stars, but they are longer exposures that do not include any sunlit objects. The following is an example:

www.braeunig.us/space/pics/hoax/photo02.jpg

This is a 4-second exposure but I don’t know the F-stop. There are stars below the altitude of the aurora, but none below the limb of the Earth. The constellation Orion is clearly visible.

[Data Cable]

grandlunar1980 said:

Does Venus really show up in the Apollo photos?

See pg. 1 of this thread.

[Grand Lunar]

So it seems the answer is "No." Greenmagoos is jumping up and down for nothing then.
Thanks!

Oh, and Bob B;
That 's the very same image that Greenmagoos used.
Looking at the arrangement of the lights, you do see a few of them beneath the Earth's limb, mostly toward the lower right.
The explaination given by another user on a different thread was that those are instrument panal lights reflecting off the window.

[Bob B.]

grandlunar1980 said:

Oh, and Bob B;
That 's the very same image that Greenmagoos used.

Did his image include the caption at the bottom? If so, then he cribbed it off my web site.

grandlunar1980 said:

Looking at the arrangement of the lights, you do see a few of them beneath the Earth's limb, mostly toward the lower right.

Are you talking about that group of three just below the glow of the aurora? If not, then I don't think I see what you're talking about.

grandlunar1980 said:

The explaination given by another user on a different thread was that those are instrument panal lights reflecting off the window.

That could be, but I think there may be a dark gap between the aurora and the limb of the Earth. Those could be bright stars visible through the gap.

That image is not a very good scan (I had a pretty crappy scanner back then). If I can remember which of my books the photo came from I'll take a closer look at it. Surely the print in the book will be much better than the scan. I'll also take a look at a star chart to see what stars may be in that position.

[Data Cable]

grandlunar1980 said:

So it seems the answer is "No."

Eh? You don't think that faint white dot in exactly the same position relative to the crescent of the earth in AS14-64-9189 - 9197, just about where several different celestial simulation software titles indicate Venus should be, is Venus?

[Grand Lunar]

bob said:

grandlunar1980 said:

Oh, and Bob B;
That 's the very same image that Greenmagoos used.

Did his image include the caption at the bottom? If so, then he cribbed it off my web site.

Surprise, surprise, he removed the image (just found out). Typical of an HBer.
I think he got the image from a NASA site.

Are you talking about that group of three just below the glow of the aurora? If not, then I don't think I see what you're talking about.

Basically, I speak of any of the dots that appear below the Earth's horizon.

grandlunar1980 said:

The explaination given by another user on a different thread was that those are instrument panal lights reflecting off the window.

That could be, but I think there may be a dark gap between the aurora and the limb of the Earth. Those could be bright stars visible through the gap.

That image is not a very good scan (I had a pretty crappy scanner back then). If I can remember which of my books the photo came from I'll take a closer look at it. Surely the print in the book will be much better than the scan. I'll also take a look at a star chart to see what stars may be in that position.

A closer look and a trip down memory lane would be benificial.

The dots just seem too bright for a 4 second exposure of stars, even if it was the constellation Orion.

[Grand Lunar]

datacable said:

grandlunar1980 said:

So it seems the answer is "No."

Eh? You don't think that faint white dot in exactly the same position relative to the crescent of the earth in AS14-64-9189 - 9197, just about where several different celestial simulation software titles indicate Venus should be, is Venus?

I was told to look at Page 1 for the answer.
The answer I saw was "No".
Is that in error?


Chris Griffin voice:
"I don't know!"

[Bob B.]

Here is a little better scan and a star chart of the same area. I think it is pretty clear we are indeed seeing stars; they match up perfectly. The limb of the Earth is a little more apparent in this image. There are a few dots against the blackness of the Earth but I'm pretty sure that is just dust or other faults in the scan.

www.braeunig.us/pics/orion2.jpg

www.braeunig.us/pics/orion3.jpg

You can also view a little bigger image here. Note that this was scanned from a book, so you're seeing some of the texture of the paper. Here is the caption that accompanies the photograph:

The rays of the aurora show nearly all their known colors as they dance in front of the constellation Orion. The stars in Orion's head and his left shoulder are seen through the orange airglow layer, giving the illusion that the stars are closer than the horizon.

The first accurate measurements of the aurora's altitude were made using pairs of photographs taken simultaneously from different locations that contained both aurora and stars. Norwegian scientists were then able to triangulate the height of the aurora. Like all photographs in this chapter, this one was made with a handheld camera; this was a four-second exposure from the flight deck of Endeavour.

SOURCE:
ORBIT: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth
Jay Apt, Michael Helfert, Justin Wilkinson
The National Geographic Society, 1996

grandlunar1980 said:

The dots just seem too bright for a 4 second exposure of stars, even if it was the constellation Orion.

Four seconds does seem a like a fairly short exposure, but we don't know what F-stop or film speed was used. Without this information it is hard to conclude anything. I don't have too much of a problem with it.

[Data Cable]

grandlunar1980 said:

I was told to look at Page 1 for the answer.
The answer I saw was "No".
Is that in error?

Ah, you apparently stopped at BertLs' first reply (which was a refusal to engage in the discussion, not an answer to a question ). My apologies, I should have been more precise. See reply #12 on pg. 1.

[Kiwi]

grandlunar1980 said:

...he [HB GreenMagoo] did argue that a shuttle image that showed an auroa shows stars, even though the "stars" are cleary below the horizon of Earth (he claims the Earth itself isn't visible at all).

I have to side with GreenMagoo here -- I don't see the earth's horizon and would guess that it's somewhere down in the bottom dark area. The caption says the orange area is air glow, and the stars in it perfectly match Bob B's star map.

The trio of stars at bottom right, a little under 7 o'clock from Betelgeuse and right on the edge of the dark area, contain one of my favourite binocular sights -- three equally bright but tiny and faint stars in a straight line almost between the two blue stars of the trio. I call them the The Three Cuties. They show up in long-exposure telescope photos.


By the way, it's HB (for Hoax Believer) not HBer.

[Grand Lunar]

Bob B,

That does look better.

I think I do see Orion, but not in the middle of the picture. On the right side above the horizon, I do see three stars lined up, indicating the belt.
The bright lights that appear as Orion are all the same brightness and coloration. Plus, one of them is below the horizon.

The number of blue lights also indicates to me that a lot of the lights we see are reflections of the instrument panal.


Kiwi,

The horizon starts occupies the bottom 1/4 of the image, starting on the right side and curving downward to the left.


Thanks for the correction on the term HB. The "er" at the end is redundent then.

[Grand Lunar]

datacable said:

grandlunar1980 said:

I was told to look at Page 1 for the answer.
The answer I saw was "No".
Is that in error?

Ah, you apparently stopped at BertLs' first reply (which was a refusal to engage in the discussion, not an answer to a question ). My apologies, I should have been more precise. See reply #12 on pg. 1.

Precision, precision my friend!

So, it DOES show up, but not prominently.

Thanks for the research, BTW. That couldn't have been easy.

[Bob B.]

grandlunar1980 said:

I think I do see Orion...

Orion is upside down from the way we normally see it in the northern hemisphere.

grandlunar1980 said:

The number of blue lights also indicates to me that a lot of the lights we see are reflections of the instrument panal.

All those blue lights look to me to line up perfectly with the star positions in the star chart. I don't see any indication that those are reflected lights.

I also think there is a good chance the camera was very close to the window. (How else do you take a 4-second exposure with a hand-held camera unless you steady it against the window frame and/or glass?) If that is the case then I wouldn't expect any reflections from inside the Shuttle.

[Jason Thompson]

There seems to be some confusion about what's in that picture. Hopefully this will help. This is how I interpret that picture.