Colorful Moon Mosaic (APOD 7 Sep 2006)

[Dana McPeek]

Fabulous picture!

I have not had the opportunity to see the moon from the vacuum of space.

Does anyone know if the moon would look like this without the atmosphere dispersing light?

D

[harry]

Hello Dana

Colorful Moon Mosaic
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060907.html

compare this with

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041021.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960420.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap961031.html

The moon is so great,,,,,,,,,,,,,it tells us when to go fishing. But! that does not mean I catch fish.

[Dana McPeek]

Hi Harry,
Thanks for responding, but you didn't answer the question.

The moon mosaic gave us a view we can not get from the earth -- stars that are not washed out by the much brighter moon -- beautiful -- like something from an SF movie.

My questions was, would a view from space look lie that? From the perspective of a vacuum, would the star field be visible very close to the surface, or would the reflection still wash them out? Or would the view from space wash out the field even more?

Dana

[orin stepanek]

Hi Dana! Here are some clips from Apollo. These pictures were taken during the time of Lunar exploration.
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/apollo.html
They should give an excellent view of what the moon and the earth look like from outer space.
Orin

[Dana McPeek]

Excellent pictures. I can't tell you how much I wanted to be there...

But again, that is not an answer to my question. The Moon Mosaic shows a heavily retouched phot of the mood, with the stars visible right next to the surface. A camera will expose for the bright surface and the stars are not visible.

But, can the human eye, from the vacuum of space, discern stars right next to the surface of the moon?

Dana

[linx]

Hi Harry, Dana & all

i too thought todays APOD was absolutely tremendous ..& thanks Harry for the other links

The moon is so great,,,,,,,,,,,,,it tells us when to go fishing. But!
that does not mean I catch fish.

..shame & there we were with the chips!
Linx

[Wadsworth]

If you don't want a cameras representation, you're going to have to ask someone who has been there. I would tend to think that it would look much like the pictures of earth taken from the moons surface.
The astronauts landed on the bright side of the moon (so they could see and not freeze) and probably couldn't see many if ANY other stars from where they were. The sun would simply drown them out.

As long as you are relatively close to the sun, and you are facing it, you shouldn't be able to see most other light emitting celestial objects with the human eye.

[BMAONE23]

I would imagine, though I don't have the specifics of the camera settings, that given the relative brightness of the moon in the attached Apollo 11 image, the apperature setting would be relatively close to what the human eye operates at. (visual light level) Given this, If you look closely at the image you can faintly make out background stars.

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/6667.jpg

This is probably how it would look to the unaided eye.

[orin stepanek]

I think the light of the moon may detract from seeing too many stars if you are looking directly at the moon as you get closer to the moon. If you are en route to the moon or Earth; you would see more stars away from the well lit bodies.
Orin

[Sowndbyte]

If I remember correctly the lack of stars in the very photographs linked,
were a major reason conspiracy theorists say NASA never went to the moon. that and the waving flag
I was in Grade schol and even I was told BEFORE we landed on the moon that the flag was going to be held by wires to appear to be waving. some people must have missed that day in class.

Absolutely stunning picture today APOD thank you it went straight to desktop background

[zorgon]

I was in Grade schol and even I was told BEFORE we landed on the moon that the flag was going to be held by wires to appear to be waving. some people must have missed that day in class.

Yes the flag was wired to make it appear to be wavy... but that is not what is meant... the flag actually waves in a light 'breeze' in three different videos..

Absolutely stunning picture today APOD thank you it went straight to desktop background

Yes isn't it though? Noel did a really great job creating that image by rotating it 90 degrees and hyper saturating the image... then to make it a real work of art... added the stars...



Google is your friend don't take NASA's word for it

http://ncarboni.home.att.net/Astrophotography.html

[craterchains]

[BMAONE23]

Yes the flag was wired to make it appear to be wavy... but that is not what is meant... the flag actually waves in a light 'breeze' in three different videos..



http://ncarboni.home.att.net/Astrophotography.html

The flag appeard to be waving in the video images because the astronaut just released it. any subsequent waving video images are either because the flag was just disturbed by an astronaut and edited not to include this fact, or created at a later date as fuel for and by conspiracy theorists.

[bystander]

Ok, I'm curious. What are the two bright "stars" on the right edge on the moon? (About 2:00 and 3:30) Noel?

BTW - Great picture!

[iamlucky13]

The flag appeard to be waving in the video images because the astronaut just released it. any subsequent waving video images are either because the flag was just disturbed by an astronaut and edited not to include this fact, or created at a later date as fuel for and by conspiracy theorists.

Right. For a while there was also an explanation going around that this was the solar wind, but this is not true. For one, I don't think the solar wind varies substantially at that kind of frequency.

Something that just occurred to me is that the lack of substantial atmosphere on the moon would prolong, perhaps noticeably, the length of time a wave would be present. A wave dies out both due to damping from its internal friction of the folding and sliding of fibers against each other and due to drag as it displaces air with each flap. Half the damping is removed on the moon.

[NoelC]

Wow, thank you all. Some very kind words here.

I completely missed this discussion the first time around, and I apologize for my lack of response.

The bright stars are near the Pleiades cluster. That's the star field I digitally added to the moon photo.

For those who missed the details, this image has had the colors exaggerated by increasing the saturation of the image digitally. I went to some effort to capture an extremely high accuracy dataset, which could then be subjected to some pretty strong digital manipulation to bring out the true color differences in the lunar surface. Generally speaking, it's more pale and much more gray than my image portrays.

By the way, I STRONGLY recommend that everyone, at some time, have a close look at the moon through a telescope. Set aside some time to really study it. The surface, especially near the light-dark terminator, is breathtakingly textured. Well worth whatever effort to see "in person".

Thanks again for all your nice comments!

-Noel