As far as I know from my education (my field in Computer Science is Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence), JayUtah is completely right in his explanation of how the human eye/brain interpret light, compared to how photographic film samples it.

Of course, I'm just an amateur photographer of the digital era, so I think my support of his statements should be considered a bit week on the photographic side. Still, I'm certain he's right.

I agree with Jay too, and Craig as well. Although, to be more complete, they should mention the effects of reciprocity failure in film. When photons start acting on the film's emulsion, it begings to lose sensitivity. For real long exposures, you have to expose longer still to make up for some of the loss.

(And, Jay, you are correct that the eye does integrate over the short term. DLP projectors are a good demonstration of this.
Star Wars looked pretty good projected with a DLP with frame times of 1/24th of a second.)

For what it is worth, the only Apollo photos I came across that have stars in them, are taken from the CM in orbit. The following is from the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report. They were trying to photograph the zodiacal light with a 35 mm Nikon. Image (d) is 2-second exposure. Note, though, that this is with Kodak 2485 film, which is very high speed at ASA 6000.

I spotted the "star" (1 visible) in Dave's Realplayer footage. But I want to ask dave where he got this footage.

"Star" footage.

Does anyone recognise what mission this is from?

It looks like fiducials are visible, could it be a Hasselblad image/panorama made into a clip?

Andrew - where in the clip is the "star"? I looped the clip 20 times and could not find it. Its of such poor quality any "star" that is seen may be a compression artifact. What appear to be fiducials might be artifacts as well but it would not surprise me if it is a clip made from a still or panorama - that fits into the way the HB’s create “facts”.

C-Dave - where did you get this clip? What mission is it from?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SpacedOut on 2002-06-13 07:04 ]</font>

I think the quality vastly improves if you right click and "save", then play it back.
It also looks like a fiducial grid is visible. So I think it could be a Hasselblad still. That would account for why the alleged "star" maintains a fixed position relative to the ground.

Dave, could you tell us where you got this footage from?

After looking at that footage again, I'm not even sure it's actually the Moon. It looks more like an artist's rendition of lunar features being panned across. It certainly doesn't look like any other lunar footage I've ever seen.

And no, I still haven't spotted anything even remotely star-like in it.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

AHA! I finally spotted it. After downloading the clip and running it a dozen times in double-sized mode, I got it.

It's a little fuzzy patch above and to the right of the highest point on the horizon. A little less than halfway from there to the top of the frame. It's almost invisible at regular size.

Still can't see how it proves the existance of stars. It's only one small blip after all.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Thanks for the right-click tip, that clears up a number of things.

First, the object Mr. Cosnette believes is a star is obvious now. However nothing proves it's a star. In order for his argument to hold, it must be proven that it's a star and not anything else.

Second, the ATVEF information (the "bits" in top scan line) conclusively establishes that this was recorded from a commercial television broadcast. Mr. Cosnette likely does not know which mission this footage is from, or whether it's even authentic Apollo footage.

Third, the features of the terrain -- convoluted mountains and a valley with many sharp-rimmed craters -- are quite uncharacteristic of actual lunar terrain. It is more consistent with early artist's conceptions of the lunar surface. Further, artistic license may compel the artist to render stars in the sky. I think the best conclusion is that this is a recently televised pan of an artist's conception of the lunar surface.

Mr. Cosnette's argument regarding the video is predicated on the premise that it is authentic Apollo film or video footage. There is evidence that it is not. Therefore until such time as Mr. Cosnette can describe the provenance of the video clip and allow us to verify his evidence in the primary sources, I reject his claim that this footage shows a star in the sky in actual lunar photography.

Mr. Cosnette's argument regarding the still photos is based on the premise that the white spots in question appear on the original transparencies and are conclusively stars. A vast array of theoretical and empirical evidence has been presented that is not consistent with that premise, and which Mr. Cosnette has not addressed. In fact, Mr. Cosnette has provided nothing except his inexpert opinion on any of this issue.

Finally, Mr. Cosnette's assertions (i.e., that the absence of stars in lunar photography is anomalous, and the alleged presence of stars in lunar photography is anomalous) are mutually contradictory. No proof of actual anomaly can be established according to that line of reasoning.

Mr. Cosnette's assertions (i.e., that the absence of stars in lunar photography is anomalous, and the alleged presence of stars in lunar photography is anomalous) are mutually contradictory.

This is what galls me...

An HBer says, "The photos are fake because you should see stars."

It's explained that photographing stars under those conditions is highly unlikely and there should be no stars.

"Aha!" exclaims the HBer. "But here's a photo with stars which proves they are fake."

And the killer is they don't see the contradiction!!

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img] ...my head hurts... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Its quite obvious that the main goal of most HB’s once people start to shoot down their theories is to shoot down the experts not defend themselves. Based on that premise it doesn’t matter if the HB is making sense – they assume victory if they make the experts look confused. For proof just visit C-Dave’s discussion board.

That "footage" resembles the famous Lunar Orbiter photo looking across Copernicus crater. This very well may be a painting inspired by that "picture of the year."
The hills in the foreground are central peaks, and the crater rim is the wall of mountains in the background.

Exactly right, SpacedOut. Mr. Cosnette seems to believe that his case can be proved not by providing any evidence for it in the customary way, but by simply showing that one of the arguments against it doesn't appear true. That's like trying to prove that something is yellow by showing that it's not green.

Unfortunately Mr. Cosnette is so wrapped up in his chosen method of proof (i.e., trying to prove someone else wrong) that he can't see when his steamroller runs over his own foot. To continue the above analogy, that would be as if the proof that an object is not green would also prove it's not yellow.

A lot of conspiracy theories suffer from similar large-scale logical flaws. The major flaw would have to be the assumption of causation, otherwise known as the affirmed consequent.

Here are two images from my recent star photography attempt.

The first image is a taken with a 35mm camera and a 24mm lens atop my telescope. I did nake one error in my first post about this photography. The actual film I used was ektachrome 200. Exposure time for this image was 4 mins at f 4.5.

The second image just shows the viewing setup for that night. i did a little light painting with a small red flashlight. Exposure time was in the 15-20 min range ( I think...I didnt record it)

As I stated in the eariler post images exposed at 1/125, 1/60 and 1/30 were pure black.

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/infocusin...src=ph&.view=t

Craig, I think that works out pretty consistent with those Apollo photos from the CM showing stars I posted (on the previous page).

The Apollo 35 mm camera was f/1.2, or almost 3 stops wider than yours. Their film ASA was 6000, or almost 5 stops more, for a total of 7 to 8 stops more than yours.

The Apollo shutter time was 2 seconds, but yours was 240, so that's the equivalent of about 7 stops more for you.

If I figured that right, then your exposure was almost equivalent to the Apollo one (not factoring in reciprocity failure). It looks to me like the star images are similar in terms of brightness. It would help, though, if you could get up to orbit to get away from all that sky brightness.

Should we pass the hat and try and get enough to send him up to the ISS?
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Joe,

I figured the same thing. I would guess 1 stop loss for reciprocity failure but I didnt check my references for the exact amount. If I read your other post right they used filters on the camera and a red or blue filter depending on the density would cause perhaps another stop of light loss give or take.

The sky glow stinks. My friend lives about 10 miles from town but its still glows like crazy. We were out on a Friday night so the bulk of the city lights stay on pretty late. That shot was taken around 12:30pm and the glow was down a bit. A big part of it was from porch lights in his addition. Thats why we built those big black panels. they help a lot. BTW the camera was pointed almost due south.

And if you guys can raise the 20 million bucks for me I'm a go for the ISS!

I thought that it was Over $100 million, now.

At least, that's what Lance Bass, of N'Sync, is Paying!

_________________
If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ZaphodBeeblebrox on 2002-06-14 01:42 ]</font>

By the way, the bright "star" in those Apollo photos is Jupiter.

Jay mentioned the differences between human vision and film. A related experiment written up in the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science report has a good example of this.

The crew also photographed the solar corona during the same sessions in which they photographed the zodiacal light. Additionally, Schmidt drew a sketch of the coronal streamers that were visible to the eye.

The attached figures show one of the photographs alongside Schmidt's sketch. From the text, I infer that the exposure time of the photo was 10 seconds. The bright "star" is Jupiter and the report states that is was overexposed. Notice the streamer detail that Schmidt was able to detect visually, but which was not picked up by the film. The streamers he sketched were corraborated by data from the Orbiting Solar Observatory 7. Speaking of the sketch, the report notes, "This identification is a tribute to the wide dynamic range or adaptability of the human eye." Dynamic range is the difference between the brightest areas in a scene and the darkest detectable areas.

In an attempt to set Craig's star photo in context, I grabbed the characteristic curve for Ektachrome E200 film off of Kodak's web site, flipped it around and plotted exposure times roughly equivalent to Craig's. (The curves for the various Ektachrome films are very similar.) A characteristic curve plots the density (darkness) you get for a given exposure level.

Craig exposed his film for 240 seconds, but to account for reciprocity failure, I reduced the amount to 120 seconds, meaning Craig would have exposed for 120 seconds to get the brightness levels we see if film did not lose its sensitivity during long exposures.

It looks like in Craig's photo, the stars do not full expose the film. To be conservative, I assumed that the stars did fully expose the film. In the graph below, I plotted a large asterisk to represent the exposure level of the stars at a 120 second exposure time. This represents the brightest image the film can record.

The minimum exposure that will record an image is towards the lower right. Kodak's curve ends at my 1/6th second exposure time. This represents the darkest image the film can record. (That's about 9.5 stops between brightest and darkest.)

Craig said his exposures of 1/30th and 1/60th of a second came out pitch black. The graph confirms that this would be the inevitable result.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Joe Durnavich on 2002-06-14 19:11 ]</font>