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Originally Posted by Maksutov
You should suggest he read a book on basic photography and pay close attention to the sensitivity ranges of various emulsions. Then point out that the same considerations apply to CCDs, i.e., when set re aperture (f stop) and exposure time to record details in bright areas, details in dark areas (such as space) will be lost. It would be very easy to take pictures of stars using Cassini's cameras, but that's not what we sent it to Saturn for!
All those incredibly detailed photographs of the moons, the rings, and Saturn itself are part of the mission objectives. BTW, if you wish, feel free to mention you got this information from someone who helped build Cassini. Of course if your friend is into conspiracies, I guess that would make me yet another government-paid disinformation agent. Oh well... 
Nevertheless, there is no "Cassini hoax", it's all very real. |
Re stars - you can see them in the few Cassini images exposed long enough to show the dark sides of moons lit by Saturnshine. Examples are
here, one of a whole series of Iapetus exposures so long that the background stars trailed into streaks,
and this additional one of Iapetus, and so on (there's one of Janus that I can't find at the moment).