In a city with heavy light pollution, we can’t see most stars. In a clear dark night maybe in a rural area, we can see a lot more. This is a fact and I can confirm this myself.
But, why is it that we can’t see a whole lot more stars from the perspective of those who are actually in space? Shouldn’t they have a way clearer view?
In: Earth Science
Two things:
1. The earth is stupidly bright, making the stars quite hard to see
2. Astronauts in white suits are very bright, so the shutter speed is shorter to not overexpose the image. This makes it so that stars are invisible. You could go out in a field and take a picture of a friend, if you want your friend to be visible, you’ll see no stars.
Astronauts do see stars but their camera settings mean they don’t show up on pictures. They need specific camera settings to be able to see the earth, or the moon, or astronauts doing a spacewalk. These things are way way brighter than the stars so if they take a photo that shows the stars, everything else will be completely washed out.
From the post 2 days ago asking this same question:
>It’s an issue with the inability of a camera to capture both very bright, and very dim things at once. If the camera were recording enough light to show you the dim stars, the white astronauts and space station in direct sunlight would be blown pure white.
>[When the ISS is in the shadow of the earth, and the cameras are set for it, stars are visible of course](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zliOQbaG1sw)
Astronauts most definitely see stars when in space, but photos taken are usually of objects and people. You can find star photos taken by astronauts by searching for them. Unfortunately I don´t have a link to any.
Photographer here. Ever tried to get both a night picture of city lights and stars at once, that is not composite of several pictures? With manual settings especially?
Thats the reason you dont get stars, astronauts, station, and earth at proper exposure at the same time. Our eyes are really shitty at getting both strong and weak light sources properly visible at once, and cameras are even worse at this task.
Amd since its those astronauts and their surroundings are the main target od the pictures, stars were waay to underexposed to be resolved by the sensor.
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