When watching nasa tv, Why can I not see stars in the backround when filming in outerspace?

Answer 1

All the answers that say they are too dim and if the camera was set to record them everything else would be over exposed are correct.

Here is my addition to that. Watch the news and look for a story with video from a location outside at night. You never see any stars in the sky. It is because they are not bright enough.

Next time you are at a night football game or at a car dealer or large shopping mall parking lot or anyplace brightly lit; look at the sky and try to see stars. You may see a very few bright ones or maybe you will see none at all.

It is the same in space. The sky is black because there is no air, but the Sun is in the sky and it is daylight and everything is bright. Your eyes automatically adjust to the brightest light which makes you unable to see the dim stars. When the shuttle is on the dark side of the Earth, they turn on bright work lights. This has the same effect as the parking lot lights, it causes the eye and camera to adjust for the bright light, making the dim stars invisible.

Answer 2

Same reason why you can´t see stars when the sky is the backgroung on a sunny day picture. You just see a blue sky. You can´t see the stars during the day. The sun lit objects are too bright. The pictures shown on nasa tv are sun lit too.
It is an exposure problem. If exposed to the background you would see the stars but the foreground would be overexposed.

Answer 3

I hope you're not gonna say because its a film set - I think the reason might be the resolution of the film.

In pictures of the earth that the first people to walk on the moon took the stars were invisible there - that was simply because the earth was much brighter and an exposure that rendered the earth correctly left the stars invisible - still cameras and movie cameras dont see contrast the way the human eye can.

Answer 4

Try an experiment. Take your camera outside on a starry night and photograph your friends, your dog, your house against a starry sky. Don't do time exposures or anything fancy, just take photographs.

You know the sky was full of stars when you took the pictures, how many can you see in the photos? What others have said about light levels and focus is the reason no stars appear in your pictures.

Answer 5

Yes it's an exposure issue. Cameras have a much smaller dynamic range than the human eye. Think of it this way...

You're standing inside your house on a sunny day and looking out the window. Our eyes can see the brightly sunlit outdoors just as well as it can see the more dimly lit (in comparison) indoors. However, take a camera and try to take a picture of something indoors with that window in the background and you will have a problem. The window itself will be brightly overexposed and the indoors will be darker than you'd like for a good picture. This is because the range of light between darkness and maximum brightness (the dynamic range) is much smaller for the camera than it is for our eyes.

The same is true for computer monitors. They cannot display the same range of brightness values that our eyes can see. That's why it doesn't hurt your eyes to look at pictures of the sun on a monitor.

Answer 6

Stars are very dim light from suns light years away. In order for stars to appear on film, the film needs to be exposed for a few seconds at least. I do not know much about movie film and that type of stuff, but I guess the same would have to apply.

Answer 7

They are not in focus. The subjects being filmed are only a few feet away and the focal length of the camera has been set for that. If you want to view the stars, focal length needs to be set to infinity.

Also, in space there is no atmosphere to distort the light of the stars. This makes them appear as even smaller points of light (though they have the same brightness) than you are used to.

They are there, just blurred beyond recognition.

Answer 8

Because the sensors and lens opening are adjusted for the bright part of the image and the individual stars do not contribute enough light to show up.

Answer 9

Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, Mae west, English television coronation highway, had Deidre Barlow and Bette who labored interior the pub, now Liz MacDonald does it too. i'm no longer able to think of of every person else yet

Answer 10

Most of the answers are right. If they allowed the light from stars to show up, the our sun's light would blow out the camera lens.