Can an astronaut see stars from the moon on the day side?

Question

because some said they can others say they could not, and niel armstrong "didn't recall seeing stars from the lunar surface"

Answer 1

they would have to shield themselves completely from the sun, and from any reflected light from the lunar surface. then they could see stars, once their eyes had dark-adapted.

they had other things on their minds while they were there. i doubt they noticed, or cared.

Answer 2

They might be able to see some of the brighter stars but that's it. The effect is like a lit up football or baseball field at night. You can see a black sky but no stars.

Answer 3

Self taught, huh?  Did the textbooks from which you studied by chance have a cat in a red and white striped hat on the cover?  If you are indeed as learned as you claim, you should also know that Neil is not spelled "niel" and that Neil Armstrong is capitalized - besides, Tina said NOTHING about an atmosphere on the moon.  Anyone with any intelligence at all would be able to pick up on and porperly interpret the simple statements she made.  Yes, you rant about something which you obviously know little about and you use terrible grammar while you are at it.  I guess we should all breathe a huge sigh of relief that you are not a "self taught" surgeon!

Answer 4

first of all, if you call yourself a scientist, you must know that nasa landed a man on the moon. if you are anywhere close to being an engenier, you must know the technology existed.

about your question, it is very hard to see stars on the moon. the moon's surface is extreamily reflective, which makes it hard to see the stars in the night sky because of the light. and a man walked on the moon... i think the last think he was conserned about were the stars.

and tina has shown that she knows more about the subject than you so i would call her a top contributor!

and like the guy below me said, the dangers of self teaching are learning myth over fact. myth- man didn't land land on the moon. fact- man did land on the moon.

Answer 5

On earth the scattering of light in air causes invivisibilty of stars. On moon  there is no air.So stars must be visible.

Answer 6

Tina L is wrong. The astronauts did care.  Everything else she said is correct.

When he returned from the Moon, Gene Cernan stated into the mission debrief: "It was also generally true that, when you were on the surface in the LM's shadow, there were too many bright things in your field-of-view for the stars to be visible. But I remember that I wanted to see whether I could see stars, and there were times out on the surface when I found that, if you allowed yourself to just focus and maybe even just shielded your eyes to some degree, even outside the LM shadow you could see stars in the sky. And, quite frankly, under the right conditions here on Earth on a bright sunlit day, you can do the same thing. I could see stars through my helmet visor; not easily, but it can be done."

Answer 7

Yes, an astronaut can see stars from the daylit side of the Moon, IF conditions are right. If anything of the daylit surface or the Sun gets into his field of view his eyes will be adjusted for bright conditions and he won't see stars. If he can look up away from the Sun and the surface then he can see stars.

But the reason they went to the Moon was to study the Moon, not the stars. The stars seen from the Moon look EXACTLY the same as they do from Earth, the difference in location being insufficient to produce any change in their relative locations. They were rather busy with the stuff going on on the Moon. On Apollo 16 they did take pictures of the stars using a UV camera, that being the only sensible reason for looking at the stars from the Moon, since UV is absorbed by the atmosphere and so we cannot study stars in UV from the surface of the Earth.

Answer 8

No, what Tina said is absolutely correct.  Stars would not  register on film when there is any bright object in the field.  If you don't believe me, browse the thousands of photos from earth orbit of things like the space station and the space shuttle and let me know if you find a single star.

Have you ever been to a stadium for a night game?  Let me know how many stars you see the next time you go.  The eye adjusts to the ambient light.  Unless the astronauts looked way up and away from the sun, they would see few, if any, stars.

So if someone asked them after they came back, here's exactly the answer I would expect: "Hmmm, now that you mention it, I really don't remember noticing any stars."  Of course, if the thing was faked, their answer would be, "Oh God, yes!  The sky was ablaze with them.  It was magnificent."

Hey, you're a self-taught scientist and engineer just like Ralph Rene!  Atmosphere's pretty thin up there, isn't it?

Answer 9

The dangers of being "self taught" is that theres no one to make sure that you learned facts or myths.

Apollo landed on the Moon six times. Thats a fact. If you don't like it, oh well, tough.

Astronauts on the Moon were in Lunar mid morning sunlight, and that light wasn't filtered by an atmosphere. So, it went from glaring to dark, just by stepping into shadow. So, anyone there, whose eyes are adapted to the bright lighting (And, as the Moon's surface is very, very reflective, that brightness isn't all from one direction), then they won't see stars, for the same reason anyone here doesn't, when they step out from a brightly lit house.

Next, all the Moon walkers were very BUSY in their all too brief times on the lunar surface. Stopping to wait for their corneas to adapt to (non existant) darkness wasn't going to happen.

Moon deniers are just nuts and ignorant. Read a book.

Answer 10

Yes absolutely it is possible to see stars on the sunny side of the moon. The atmosphere on the moon is nearly non existent so there is really no diffused light which would prevent you from seeing stars.