Why do photos of space taken from space never show any stars? ?

Question

Why do photos of space taken from space never show any stars? ?

Answer 1

The pictures of man-made objects in space that you speak of all suffer from one fatal flaw: they lack what astronomers call "integration time". Even in space, stars are very faint. If you use a camera to take a picture of an object in space, then, you have to illuminate it using some kind of flash (just like on Earth). The flash is bright enough that the time over which the camera film is being exposed is, like on Earth, only a fraction of a second. This short time is more than sufficient to get a picture of the man-made object that your flash illuminates, but way too short to capture the stars. The fundamental difference between pictures of the stars themselves taken by telescopes and the pictures of things in space with stars in the background is the exposure time, or integration time: in fact, astronomers do everything they can to avoid "doctoring" images they obtain, since this might hide the very science that they are trying to get at.

I bet you can see how this works for yourself. The next time you are out on a clear night with some friends, take a picture of them with a starry sky in the background. When you develop the pictures, have a hard look for the stars that you know were there when you took the picture. Just like in space, a flash on Earth that allows you to photograph your friends obscures the stars (the effect should be more pronounced on Earth than it is in space because of our light-scattering atmosphere). To photograph the sky from Earth, you need a long-exposure camera, just like in space.  

Answer 2

bcuz the exposures are far too short. this is well known to all but moon hoax trolls, who are the only ppl who ever ask this.

Answer 3

It depends.  In many cases, there are stars.  But sometimes, for example, the photo is taken near a bright object, such as from the surface of the Moon.  The contrast from light to dark is too much for the camera to handle, so it will only show the bright surface.

This also happens near an urban city.  The lights from the city are so bright, that it overpowers the light that you would see from stars, had there not been lights from the city.  It's just because the contrast is so great that the camera can't see the stars.  This also happens with the naked eye.

Answer 4

The reason photos taken in space show no stars is the same reason photos taken from earth at night show no stars in the sky.  The astronauts are using 100 ISO film (a very slow, very fine grained film), shooting it at 1/250 or 1/500 second (a very fast shutter speed).  That just isn't enough time for the dim light of the stars to make an imprint on the slow speed emulsion. Film (and digital cameras) do not see the same variety of light that we see. We can see from very dark to very bright objects. Film and digital cameras have a very short range of light they can ingest before the picture gets totally washed out.

Answer 5

  Anything they photograph in space is oriented around the activities they are participating in.all these tings are bright or white so the ambient light obscures the stars.

Answer 6

It depends on your aperature, exposure length, and speed.  If you pointed the camera at Earth in daytime, you could set to see Earth well but no stars, or see stars well but with Earth overexposed.

Answer 7

It is a fact of photography and getting the right exposure for what you want to see. It has nothing to do with outer space. You can see stars as points of light but until recently we have never seen the surface of a star other then our Sun.

Stars are very dim compared to planets do to see a planet lit by our Sun is like looking at something in daylight. If you take a picture of our moon, you can just use daylight settings, because it is in Daylight. To expose a star in order to see it, you must expose much longer and the moon or planet will be nothing but a bright overexposed detail less object. The moon is the best example because it is close. Set your camera like a normal exposure in the daytime and it will come out even though it is nighttime on Earth.

Answer 8

I'm not sure what you are referring to.  I've seen several pictures taken by the HST that include hundreds of stars.

Photos of planets from space will not show stars because of a simple issue with photography.  It is exceedingly difficult to get an exposure that will have a very bright object (a nearby planet) and a very faint object (a distant star) without either overexposing the bright object, or not capturing the faint one.

Answer 9

The pictures of man-made objects in space that you speak of all suffer from one fatal flaw: they lack what astronomers call "integration time". Even in space, stars are very faint. If you use a camera to take a picture of an object in space, then, you have to illuminate it using some kind of flash (just like on Earth). The flash is bright enough that the time over which the camera film is being exposed is, like on Earth, only a fraction of a second. This short time is more than sufficient to get a picture of the man-made object that your flash illuminates, but way too short to capture the stars. The fundamental difference between pictures of the stars themselves taken by telescopes and the pictures of things in space with stars in the background is the exposure time, or integration time: in fact, astronomers do everything they can to avoid "doctoring" images they obtain, since this might hide the very science that they are trying to get at.

I bet you can see how this works for yourself. The next time you are out on a clear night with some friends, take a picture of them with a starry sky in the background. When you develop the pictures, have a hard look for the stars that you know were there when you took the picture. Just like in space, a flash on Earth that allows you to photograph your friends obscures the stars (the effect should be more pronounced on Earth than it is in space because of our light-scattering atmosphere). To photograph the sky from Earth, you need a long-exposure camera, just like in space