Ohhhh! 4:25 is a must see

Might be a dumb question but why cant you see any stars in the back ground of any of these pics? Makes it look fake in some way (not saying it is) just strange to see space as totally black.

>> ^Jordass:
Might be a dumb question but why cant you see any stars in the back ground of any of these pics? Makes it look fake in some way (not saying it is) just strange to see space as totally black.



Stars are really really dim. When you have the brightness of a gas giant in front of you there is no way to focus on both the dim star and the brightness of the gas giant without the colors being overexposed on the gas giant (would be a giant white ball).

You can experience this same effect on earth. Go to the city and view the night sky then go to the country. Better yet, try and view the stars at the day time

Mind you that a camera lens is less powerful that your eye in conjunction with your brain. When your eye sees something, your brain is tasked to make out details that it has gleaned from other imagines in your immediate past. Your brain does a LOT of work working together vision streams and implacing information that wasn't really in that one single image. A camera doesn't do that at all. It is a flat image with no cerebral attachments.

You can still see earth because planets are really bright compared to the distant glow of the stars. This is why the first astrologers and astronomers were always dealing with planets (even if they didn't know the difference between a planet or a star), because they are so very bright it was easy to pick them up during any time of year with very little magnification if any at all.

Many of the moon hoax people use this same claim against the moon photos but the lack of being able to focus on the vast vast difference in brightness between the direct unfiltered sun and the distant dim glow of star light is why that is so, and it is the same reason here.


and btw, it is not a dumb question, it is actually highly observant

"That dot in the center of the image is the Earth. It’s us. Cassini was nearly one billion miles from us when it took this image, orbiting a giant ball of gas as exotic and alien as any place we can imagine."
--from: bad astronomy.

Both of you, informed. Love it.

*promote

Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Friday, August 22nd, 2008 8:09pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter Doc_M.