I thought that was impossible - isn't that why there's no stars in any moon photos?
Of course they might be UFOs, but in that case there's an awful lot of them.
Here's the photo in question:
Posted on 12/29/2014 8:37:24 PM PST by Colofornian
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NASA released this Hubble Space Telescope image of the Monkey Head Nebula on March 17 to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the telescope's launch in 1990. The nebula is a star-forming region 6,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. This infrared view shows how the dusty cloud is being sculpted by ultraviolet light from hot stars in the center of the nebula.
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Active regions on the sun resemble a jack-o'-lantern in this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, captured on Oct. 8...in time for Halloween.
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A star cluster in the heart of the Flame Nebula, known as NGC 2024, glows in a May 8 image that combines data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope. Chandra's X-ray view is shown in purple, while red, green and blue hues add Spitzer's perspective in infrared wavelengths. The star cluster is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.
[SNIP]
Chinese astronomers and others around the world witnessed the creation of the Crab Nebula by a supernova explosion in the year 1054. This 15th-anniversary image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, released July 22, shows a rapidly rotating neutron star spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles from the heart of...Crab Nebula. Lower-energy X-rays are shown in red, medium energy in green, and high energy in blue.
Star trails circle the celestial south pole over a cactus-dominated landscape in Chile's Atacama Desert, in a long-exposure image released by the European Southern Observatory on May 12. The trails show the apparent path of stars in the sky as Earth slowly rotates. A deeper exposure was superimposed over the magnificent trails, revealing fainter stars and the southern Milky Way.
The G292.0+1.8 supernova remnant is shown...
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
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Wonkawonkablitzzerpbling
I thought that was impossible - isn't that why there's no stars in any moon photos?
Of course they might be UFOs, but in that case there's an awful lot of them.
Here's the photo in question:
“I thought that was impossible...”
These are not your father’s cameras.
Bump for later.
CCD or film, they still have similiar ranges for daylight photographs - which do not include stars - next to a brightly lit Earth and brightly lit interior of the space station. As, of course, their other photos show in abundance, such as astronauts doing spacewalks with the station or Earth as a background next to space.
Physics is physics. And this photo is very odd.
I have an idea, let’s ask the ghost of William of Ockham:
“What’s that, William?”
“Why yes, William, they probably do have dust and aerosols inside the Space Station.”
“Yes, it could well be that we are seeing spots on the inside of the windows, but would that be the simplest explanation, William?”
“Now, wouldn’t a simpler explanation be that we are seeing UFO’s? or maybe it’s snowing outside? Really William, you just don’t seem to be very good at this sort of thing anymore.”
“Well, if you’re going to be snippy about it, why don’t you just go back to whatever dimension I summoned you forth from? Good day to you, William.”
“I said ‘Good day, Sir!’”
Sheeesh, some dead people just don’t know how to accept that their logic is no longer needed in today’s modern, enlightened world...
There's a LOT of dust and aerosols in spacecraft. It's been a problem for many years. They really should send up a housekeeper with the missions. Its only logical.
It looks to me like people have been getting up close and personal with the windows, which is exactly what I would be longing to do if I were in that position.
I hadn’t seen that video before. Based on the out of focus diffraction pattern of the “swimmers”, and the obvious secondary mirror obstruction, I’d guess we were looking at specks of dust that are very close to the camera... possibly even inside the lens, though I find that hard to accept because of the sealed nature of a Schmidt Cassegrain or Maksutov Cassegrain lens.
But then again, they could be space jellyfish! Yeah, probably space jellyfish. :)
I'll go with that, since the damn things are pulsing.
Also, since they're passing behind the 12 mile long tether, which is itself more than 80 nautical miles from the space vehicle, the estimated size must then be about 2-3 miles in diameter.
I have spent the last 30 years observing first hand through telescopes, as well as manufacturing them... and I’ve seen artifacts like the ones observed in the video thousands of times. They’re out of focus points of light under very high magnification. The tether is also way out of focus, which is why things can appear to go behind it (point objects don’t cover up a wide out of focus beam). It’s a similar reason as to why stars twinkle and planets don’t.
There’s a central obstruction in the optical path, and since it’s on the shuttle then it’s probably a Schmidt Cassegrain or Maksutov Cassegrain optical assembly (because they’re much shorter than Newtonians). (I’ve made scopes that have flown on many NASA vehicles)
The “notch” at the bottom of each of the artifacts actually resembles a Newtonian style focuser intruding in the light path... and so it could be an extremely fast Newtonian... though the secondary obstruction looks too small for that. It could also be a heat source close to the mirror. My daily driver scope (14.5” F5.5 Newt) looks like that just from mounting a heavy weight behind the mirror off to one side. The tiny amount of heat given off by a simple piece of metal close to the back of a telescope mirror can make all kinds of screwy patterns show up in the diffraction pattern.
Say what you will... but I’ve seen this thousands of times. The artifacts behave exactly like I would expect illuminated dust to appear.
I too am an amateur astronomer of many years, having seen optical aberrations similar to what you describe many times.
IMHO, these things are completely different.
Peace Out.
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