Why were there no stars in photos taken on manned spaceflight? I was looking at some photos taken by astronauts outside space station. The space behind them were totally black, as if there wasn't a single star at all. Why is that so?
RickB
Favorite Answer
Things like astronauts, space shuttles, and the earth seen from space, are very, very brightly lit compared to the background stars. In order to take a well-exposed photo of such things, you need to adjust the camera's aperture and shutter speed to values suitable for bright objects. With those settings, much dimmer objects (like stars) don't produce enough light to expose the film (or to activate the camera's image sensor).
You see the same effect (on the ground) if you take a picture of a brightly lit subject at night. Even if your eyes can see stars behind the subject, they won't show up in the picture. In order to take pictures of stars, you need to leave the shutter open for a long time, and/or use a very small f-number; those settings would be unsuitable for brighter subjects because it would make them overexposed or blurry.
When you do see photos that include both a well-exposed foreground subject and the background stars, then either they are photoshopped; or they are long-term exposures of a dimly lit foreground subject (the light gathers over a long time to make the subject look brighter); or they use "High Dynamic Range" techniques, which basically means taking several exposures at different settings, and then using a computer to combine them. None of these techniques are suitable for pictures taken on a space walk. :-)
DLM
Because the exposure time was set to not overexpose the primary objects of the photograph. Take a picture of someone standing under a bright light with the night sky in the background. Notice how you either get no stars and a good exposure of your subject, or many stars with the subject completely overexposed?
aladdinwa
Because they are too dim to show up with the short exposure times of the photographs. If the exposure time was long enough for the stars to show up, the object they were photographing would just be a big, white blob.
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Ed
This is probably due to the older cameras that were used. The contrast in brightness between the earth and the stars that appear around it is probably too great for the camera to deal with and therefore the camera cannot display the stars as their light intensity is too low.
?
Because there is no atmosphere in space