Questions tagged [camera]
Questions about imagery devices on spacecraft and probes.
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Why do the boot prints on the moon appear bright in some photographs or film?
I've seen that in some videos or photos of the moon mission, the boot prints appear brighter relative to the untouched ground:
But in some other cases, they are the same brightness as the ground:
Is ...
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Why does the Curiosity rover camera image resolution have "milliradians" as a unit?
NASA's published specs for the Curiosity rover cameras says that the image resolution is in milliradians per pixel. Which is odd because image resolution is measured in physical size units, i.e. ...
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Mirror size and pixel resolution on planetary surfaces
MRO’s HiRise camera has a 0.5m primary mirror and a per-pixel resolution of ~30cm from an altitude of 200km. For an identical orbit, and ignoring any atmospheric effects, what mirror size would be ...
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Analogue Camera Olympus OM-1 in space?
Was analogue 35 mm camera Olympus OM-1 really in space? I read this article about this topic: http://elrectanguloenlamano.blogspot.com/2016/06/olympus-om-1-nasa-recognition-of.html?m=1
According to ...
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How did the JWST take a selfie?
During the alignment of JWST primary mirrors, this selfie was taken:
(source: NASA)
I think we're seeing here the primary mirrors, with the secondary in the center and the reflection of the support ...
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How do people know how big the rocks are in the photos of Titan's surface?
How do people know how big the rocks are in the photos of Titan's surface?
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Why is there a black donut in Perseverance's SkyCam? Is it always used to block the Sun? (sky cameras on Earth don't) How does it work?
At mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images I found Mars Perseverance Sol 258: SkyCam Camera which shows a sky camera (180° FOV fisheye view of the sky) image. I've included it below along with ...
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Where was the water buildup on Cassini's narrow-angle camera system? Did it have to remain heated continuously?
Writing this answer led me to Wikipedia's Cassini; launch and cruise phase (1997-2003) which includes the following entries
0 May 2001 – During the coast phase between Jupiter and Saturn, it was ...
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Was an onboard camera during a rocket launch ever pointing to the side rather than down?
I think all onboard cameras I ever watched were pointing down, towards the engine, during the ascent of the rocket. Do you know of any rocket that had a camera pointing to the side (towards the ...
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How did Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission "make extensive use of deployable cameras to get scientific imagery"? Did it ever produce a "PR selfie"?
Scott Manley's recent video China's Mars Rover Zhurong Has Completed Its Primary Mission, Reaches New Milestone includes the following:
And if you thought that dropping a camera on the surface of ...
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What kinds of cameras were used to film Blue Origins first crewed flight launch?
Obviously, the launch cameras were standard cameras (well high-tech expensive ones), and next ones used were drones, but... higher up, seemed like at first the cameras were following the rocket, too ...
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Why Starship prototype live video feed often fails but rocket telemeteries work consistently?
On board Starship prototype cameras seemed to fail during test launches very often. However, during such video dropouts, the rocket telemeteries are still received without a hitch, so satellite uplink ...
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Can you estimate the diameter of the marked small craters of Mars in the firsts HiRes pictures released by China?
I would like to know the diameters of the smallest craters that can be clearly distinguished inside the black circle (see the quite large size image below).
Black-and-white picture of Mars taken by ...
user39593
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Why did Curiosity not have a camera on board to record the landing?
So we've had a question asking why Perseverance had a camera to record the landing and one asking if Curiosity did, but I can't find any information about why Curiosity did not have a camera on board ...
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Will the HiRes camera of the Chinese orbiter be capable of seeing the shadows of the landers and rovers on Mars?
The question is like this: The Chinese Mars Orbiter has a HiRes camera on board and I want to know if it is powerful enough to see at least the shadows of the landers and rovers now on Mars.
The high ...
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Why did Perseverance have cameras to record the sky crane operations?
Curiosity did not have a camera on the sky crane that was able to image the lowering of the rover. I'm happy that Perseverance does have cameras, resulting in this awesome video.
What was the ...
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How well could the New Horizons spacecraft localize itself in space in 3D using parallax?
NASA’s New Horizons Conducts the First Interstellar Parallax Experiment was exciting news, the spacecraft's computer, communication and camera all continue to work in the Kuiper belt due to rigorous ...
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Are spacecraft star cameras ever used as scientific instruments for research?
There are quite a lot of spacecraft that have been up there a while and a lot of them have star cameras for attitude determination and for attitude control. Space telescopes (both heavenly and Earth-...
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Besides the video game and Nine Inch Nails box set, what is HALO-IV? How does it relate to the testing of ICBM interceptors?
Near the end of the Raytheon Technologies YouTube video Missile Defense Agency completes unprecedented homeland defense test can be seen what looks to me like thermal infrared footage of a ship-...
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What did the Saturn V interstage camera capsules look like? [duplicate]
Apollo 4 and 6 each carried a pair of high-speed cameras on the second stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle. They filmed the separation of the first stage and its interstage ring, after which the ...
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Which spacecraft far from Earth have arc second resolution cameras that could measure Betelgeuse's position?
All hands on deck! We have to measure the distance to Betelgeuse ASAP because Recent headlines saying that Betelgeuse is much closer than we thought, and they point to Standing on the Shoulders of ...
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Space launches with video camera?
Are there any other rocket launches featuring video (selfie) cameras on the rocket than Falcon 9 and Electron?
Falcon 9 has some 5 camera and Electron has 3 camera
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Is there any video footage of a full reentry?
Did any orbital craft ever fully film its reentry into the atmosphere, either as long as the camera worked or until the craft landed if it could? The Space Shuttles had a front camera that showed live ...
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Could Tianwen-1, Hope, or Mars 2020 image one another en route to Mars?
Which of the optical sensors in operation on the three spacecraft currently en route to Mars (China's Tianwen-1, UAE's Emirates Mars Mission (Hope), USA's Mars 2020 (Perseverance)) could image one of ...
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Whats wrong with the camera in recent ISS videos?
In recent videos from the ISS, specifically videos after the recent Demo 2 docking, there are what seems to be little particles stuck inside or on the camera lens. I am wondering, is this damage from ...
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Taking photos from Venus surface from an airship. Possible?
On planet Venus at ground level temperature level is about 450°C which seems to high for electronic devices such as a camera.
Could electronic devices and a camera on a airship just below the clouds ...
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How does the Solar Orbiter take images so close to the sun without melting its camera?
The EUI on the NASA/ESA Solar Orbiter recently captured the closest ever images of the sun. How is that made possible without destroying the imager?
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Specifications on ISS EVA suit cameras
The suits that astronauts use to preform EVA's on the ISS have some sort of "TV camera" with which they stream analog video back to the ISS and then back to Earth so that we can see it on ...
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How (the heck) does SOHO's SWAN camera image the entire 4π sr celestial sphere?
Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) discussed in Astronomy SE:
How is Comet SWAN C/2020 F8 doing? Will it become easily visible by eye?
Why is SWAN dimming?
was discovered by humans but using the SWAN camera on ...
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What were the relative orientations of the Hubble Space Telescope's three star cameras, six rate gyros and four reaction wheels optimized for exactly?
Table 3. in paper Hubble Space Telescope Reduced-Gyro Control Law Design, Implementation and On-Orbit Performance; AAS 08-278 found in @OrganicMarble's answer seems to give the unit vectors where the ...
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Do Mars rovers protect optical windows during dust storms? Do they "avert their eyes" or do they just "grin and bear it"?
The question Did any lander or rover photograph the sun rising or setting during a Martian dust storm? makes me think of the images below showing the stuff blown around and on to martian rovers.
I'm ...
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Are there any images of Curiosity during the sky crane operations?
This answer has a nice video of Curiosity's descent to MARS. The images come from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI), which is mounted on the underside of the rover.
Was there any camera mounted on the ...
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Will the Mars 2020 rover be able to record high-framerate video of its helicopter?
According to this answer, there have been no instances of video recorded from beyond lunar orbit. Mostly, this makes sense as rovers and spacecraft are served just as well with pictures and nothing ...
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How does SPACEX capture such images?
I was watching Today's launch test by SpaceX and had a question pertaining to the method used for imagery of objects mid-air! Other than on-board cameras, what techniques do NASA and SpaceX follows ...
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How was motion blur mitigated in the early Earth-observation satellites?
The Corona Photographic Surveillance Satellite had one (later two) panning cameras for observations:
(Cameras on Corona - source)
The cameras panned over a 70 degree arc perpendicular to the flight ...
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Wide angle camera of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, were rectangular lenses used?
LROC WAC has two optical paths, one for ultraviolet and one for
visible. Light passing through the optics is focused on a single
detector. Color filters are bonded directly to the detector. One ...
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Given that JunoCam is mainly for outreach, how bad is it as a scientific instrument?
According to Wikipedia's article on JunoCam (and I have seen other corroborating sources):
JunoCam is not one of the probe's core scientific instruments; it was put on board primarily for public ...
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Do Phonesats and GoPros work with their internal batteries in space vacuum?
After reading the question OTS rechargeable battery for a lunar rover I wondered about examples of OTS (off-the-shelf) batteries in space.
There has been at least one cellphone-based satellite, and ...
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Which camera has produced this image from Longjiang-2 microsatellite?
Here is an image of this lunar micro-satellite taken in 2018, from this tweet, found in this comment below the question What is the most recent photo taken from the Moon surface as of August 2019?
In ...
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What is the most recent photo taken from the Moon surface as of August 2019?
Everybody knows the Apollo imagery, but what are the recent Earth images taken from the Moon surface, if there are any? And which hardware was used to take the images and transmit them?
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What are current challenges if any for cameras in space?
Science and technology have made large leaps since the beginning of the space exploration era.
We get amazing pictures from probes exploring our Solar system.
Possibly many challenges of all ...
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What did the Apollo 12 multispectral Four-Camera system look like?
From Apollo 12 Mission
The camera equipment carried by Apollo 12 consisted of one 70-millimeter Hasselblad EL camera, two Hasselblad data cameras, two 16-millimeter Maurer data acquisition cameras, ...
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Stanley Kubrick used a NASA-inspired lens to film by candlelight in Barry Lyndon, but what did NASA use it for?
At 07:35 in the CinemaTyler video How Kubrick Achieved the Beautiful Cinematography of Barry Lyndon he says:
As far back as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick and ...
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What kind of camera was used to produce this Apollo-era footage of the Earth?
The question Reflected Earth is 1/3 the size of primary Earth in Apollo footage through spacecraft window; why? begins:
In the video Brian Eno on Apollo at 08:20 ...
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Cine footage from Saturn V launches
How did they recover the film showing the separation of the S II stage from the S 1C and the tumbling interstage faring which attached the two stages? The camera which is attached to the S II has a ...
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How to make a camera survive in (near) space?
I'm working on project for a high altitude camera suspended from a weather balloon in order to approximately simulate spaceflight. I'm wondering how can I make a camera survive and continue to operate?...
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How is the atmosphere in the pressurized housing of ISS' HDEV cameras managed? Outgassing addressed?
This answer says:
The ISS live feed uses the cameras of the HDEV experiment. This is a group of four cameras in a pressurized housing attached to the outside of the ISS.
A hermetically sealed ...
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Have optical zoom systems been used in space exploration?
Here, 'optical zoom' means an optical system that changes magnification (angle subtended per pixel). It would not mean for example switching from one camera to another on Hubble, or changing to ...
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What are these mysterious white star-like dots near MU69 Ultima Thule? Real objects near the asteroid, noise, cosmic rays, or something else?
NOTE: I think either possibility suggested below is possible, I'm not looking for arguments why one of them would be your favorite like this answer. Instead, I'm looking for a fairly conclusive answer;...
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How are fixed exposure cameras calibrated on earth for space lighting?
How are cameras that have a fixed exposure/gain calibrated/tested on earth for space lighting?
I'll further explain with a hypothetical example of what I mean: ISRO launches a Mars-bound planetary ...
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