Questions tagged [photography]
Questions on taking images in space or of spacecraft.
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How is this estimation so off?
Based on the recent NASA's DART mission, I wrote some code to calculate the satellite's distance and relative velocity based on the the size of Dismorphos (the target asteroid) on the camera frame. ...
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Has Zodiacal light been observed from other locations than Earth&Moon?
Zodiacal light has long been known to observers on the Earth, and it has also been photographed from the Moon (well, from its orbit).
But I've failed to find any example of a photo from other ...
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Duplicated and Distorted Fiducials
In the Apollo photographic record there are dozens of duplicated and distorted fiducials. They mostly occur on color images and when the camera is pointed directly at the sun or the sun is just out of ...
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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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Why did NASA release JWST image of SMACS 0723 one day before the scheduled time?
A few hours ago, NASA released JWST image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723
one day before the scheduled time:
President Joe Biden unveiled this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First ...
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Were analog cameras been used in orbital space during an EVA after Apollo?
Analog cameras have been used intensively on the Moon and inside orbital space stations or ships.
Were analog cameras ever used during an EVA outside Spacelab, Mir, ISS or Space Shuttle? In zero ...
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Were Hasselblad cameras used in space after the Apollo mission?
Analog Hasselblad cameras with photochemical film were used extensively during the Apollo mission to the Moon.
Were they used later for Spacelab, Space Shuttle and Mir or ISS?
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Has anyone in space beyond LEO seen or has anything photographed a non-pointer laser from Earth?
The two current answers to Has anyone in space seen or photographed a simple laser pointer from Earth? both describe small, low power lasers from Earth aimed towards the ISS in LEO.
Here I'd like to ...
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Why is this Planet Labs video wobbly?
Planet Labs recently tweeted ( https://twitter.com/planet/status/1481790983155044352 ) a video showing a Falcon 9 first stage landed on a pad.
Strangely, the image looks like it was taken by a camera ...
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Help me understand these tweeted images of JWST moving through Orion!
@nealmcb's answer to Which direction/constellation is the James Webb is headed towards is "Orion" and links to twitter via
Update: See photo of JWST in Orion by @Skysurfer77x - amazing!
I ...
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How exactly was this video perspective of the James Webb space telescope heading into deep space achieved?
This article on Space.com contains a live video of the James Webb space telescope separating from the Ariane rocket’s upper stage payload capsule; forgive me if I am using the incorrect terminology.
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Very slow blinking object — high orbit satellite or some balloon? Any idea?
Could anyone help me to explain?
This evening I played with a Gen 3 night vision binocular. I spotted a very slow blinking light 5 hours after sunset. I made a 5 minute video, I but can't attach that ...
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Are there any selfies of Curiosity or Perseverance with their high gain antenna deployed and "looking up"?
The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have high gain antenna arrays on a mechanical arm that can rise up and point towards Earth and communicate directly.
Has the Curiosity rover ever communicated ...
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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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How exactly did Cassini provide rock-solid attitude control to enable high resolution low light imaging? (1.2 arcsec/pixel for narrow angle camera)
The extremely cool NASA JPL video Triumph at Saturn (Part I) is really worth a watch and/or listen.
At about 45:45 it discusses the period after SOI (Saturn Orbit ...
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Biggest periscope camera that could fit inside a Starlink satellite; how thick are they?
If all Starlink satellites had phone tier cameras & simple scopes, could images processed by their super-resolution imaging network be competitive? is a cool question and to integrate a reasonable ...
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If all Starlink satellites had phone tier cameras & simple scopes, could images processed by their super-resolution imaging network be competitive?
I was wondering; if all Starlink satellites had high-end cellphone quality cameras modules on simple telescopes, could the resulting images be combined and processed in such a way that a super-...
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Rock arches on the moon?
The large rock in the centre right position (cut off by the image's right edge) of this photo seems to include the left part of a (small) natural arch:
Is this indeed a rock arch? Are complete ...
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What is MAHLI's theoretical or expected best optical resolution? How was it defined? Was it verified on Mars?
The block quote in this answer to Has Curiosity ever taken a good hard look at the dirt covering its top surface? Can it? Have individual particles been sized? says that at a focus distance of 2.5 ...
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Was the Lunar Topographic Camera ever used?
From the APOLLO EXPERIENCE REPORT -
PHOTOGRAPHIC EQUIPMENT AND OPERATIONS
DURING MANNED SPACE-FLIGHT PROGRAMS
NASA TN D-69
However, more detailed photography was required to evaluate the
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Just how preferable are afternoons for flying Ingenuity? Why?
JPL tweet links to mars.nasa.gov's Flying on Mars Is Getting Harder and Harder which explains that seasonal changes are lowering the density of the local atmosphere, presumably due to warmer seasonal ...
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How are astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station keeping busy?
Per Wikipedia's Tiangong space station viewed today:
Days in orbit: 3 months, 15 days (13 August 2021)
Days occupied: 1 month, 27 days (13 August 2021)
Currently it is just the single core ...
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Has opalescence ever been observed on any solar system body besides Earth? Or at least from a sample from one?
New method for exoplanet detection based on iridescence? in Astronomy SE asks about observations of exoplanets, but here I'm asking about our own solar system bodies.
Question: Has opalescence ever ...
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Has iridescence ever been observed on any solar system body besides Earth? Or at least from a sample from one?
New method for exoplanet detection based on iridescence? in Astronomy SE asks about observations of exoplanets, but here I'm asking about our own solar system bodies.
Question: Has iridescence ever ...
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Zebulon Scoville "looked up at the video monitors and saw all the ice and thruster firings." Exactly what ice did Scoville see? Why ice? Where?
Gizmodo's The ISS Backflipped Out of Control After Russian Module Misfired, New Details Reveal quotes Zebulon Scoville, the NASA flight director in charge at the time:
“And so at first I was like, ‘...
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How (the heck) can thrusters alone stabilize New Horizons well enough to take high magnification 30 second long exposures in order to see +21 m objs?
Wikipedia's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager says that LORRI is a:
...telescope aboard the New Horizons spacecraft for imaging. LORRI has been used to image Jupiter, its moons, Pluto and its moons, ...
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Why shadows of the blades on Ingenuity navcam photos looks brighter than shadows of the legs?
Consider this photo from the Ingenuity navcam on the first (?) flight:
You can see that the shadows of the blades seem brighter than the shadows of the legs. It's especially noticeable when they ...
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What image compression algorithm did the Voyagers use?
Recently, Reed-Solomon error correction codes were discussed: How is stacking oranges in 24 dimensions related to receiving and decoding signals from the Voyagers?
Whilst the craft were between ...
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Viking 1 - Cydonia Face on Mars Photograph Multitudinal Black Dots
The "Face on Mars" photograph taken by Viking 1 in 1976 of the Cydonia region on Mars has multitudinal similar sized small dots in a seemingly random pattern all over it. Are all those dots ...
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Puzzler; what can we learn about the distance and direction of Earth from this cool SpaceX-tweeted image of Earth and a vacuum nozzle?
The 18-June-2021 Spacex-tweeted below says:
View from Falcon 9's second stage Merlin Vacuum engine
There is information out there about the approximate exit diameter and length of the nozzle and ...
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Did JUNO adjust it's orbit in order to fly over Clyde's spot again?
Phys.org's Juno returns to 'Clyde's Spot' on Jupiter says:
The feature is informally named for amateur astronomer Clyde Foster of Centurion, South Africa, who discovered it in 2020 using his own 14-...
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Were photographs or optical measurements of orbital craft from the ground ever used during early crewed spaceflight missions?
The lengthy and interesting blogpost Baker-Nunn Camera, Island Lagoon on Colin Mackellar's Honeysuckle Creek website includes a photo of "Gemini 10 (with John Young and Mike Collins onboard) and ...
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Why does the sky of Mars appear blue in this video of pictures sent back by the Chinese rover?
Is there any explanation for the blue sky of Mars shown in this video of photos transmitted by the Chinese rover?
Zhurong Rover is driving on Mars sending back new images (Chinese Tianwen-1 mission) -...
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Has Curiosity ever taken a good hard look at the dirt covering its top surface? Can it? Have individual particles been sized?
A reasonable answer to any one of the three enumerated parts gets the bounty!
I added some dirty pictures of Curiosity to Curiosity is still dirty! after August 9, 2018 (Sol 2137), and in this March ...
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Where is the uncropped version of this cool Ingenuity navigation camera GIF?
Ingenuity's Shadow During Third Flight shows the GIF below which is made from cropped bits from several downward-looking images from Ingenuity's navigation camera, stretched so that the ground is ...
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How did Ingenuity get such a sharp image of the shadow of its own high-speed helicopter blades?
On the NASA released self-picture of Ingenuity, shot while hovering over Mars' surface the shadow of Ingenuity with its blades is very clean.
The rotational speed of the blades is said to be around ...
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Has an astronaut ever gone into a docked capsule to take a photo out one of its windows?
A discussion below this answer to Did anybody on the ISS photograph this partial eclipse? How long did it last? How did they safely photograph it? has me wondering if astronauts can ever see "up&...
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Did anybody on the ISS photograph this partial eclipse? How long did it last? How did they safely photograph it?
Thanks to @gerrit's comment I have "irrefutable photographic circumstantial evidence" that the ISS (probably) passed through the penumbra of a partial solar eclipse. I know this is true ...
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Has Hubble ever focused on something close enough that it had to move away from being focused at infinity?
Hubble wouldn't have to change focus for Pranksat to work because Pranksat is cleverly designed to present a virtual image with a focus at infinity. But if the diffraction-limited Hubble wanted to ...
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Did the MarCo cubesats photograph each other or the Centaur stage from which they were deployed?
The screenshot below is an artists rendering of two MarCo cubesats and a Centaur upper stage moving together in space. I'm wondering if either of the MarCos photographed the other or the upper stage ...
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What's causing this stippling effect in photos from Perseverance's down-look camera?
I was taking a look at some of the raw Mars 2020 images and downloaded a few of them. For some of the photos from the down-look camera, if you zoom into them, there's a stippling/grid pattern in the ...
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Has a satellite or spacecraft orbiting the Moon or Mars been spotted from the surface of that body?
In reading this question (Lowest possible lunar orbit and has any spacecraft achieved it?), it prompts the question if any orbiting satellite/spacecraft around the Moon or Mars (the only heavenly ...
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Why did MRO have to "both pitch upward and roll hard to the left" to point exactly at Perseverance during the entry, descent and landing phase?
The HiRise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a beautiful photo of Perseverance falling through the Martian atmosphere hanging from its parachute.
This photo can be found here on the ...
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Can the NASA Ingenuity Copter record video with its camera?
I'm wondering whether the Ingenuity Helicopter on Mars as part of the Perseverance rover can record moving video in addition to still images, and if the video can then be sent back to Earth.
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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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Geolocalizing photographs on astronomical bodies
In Are pictures taken from ISS geolocalized? I was considering photos taken on the Moon by astronauts. How can I determine a photographer's position and lens direction?
And further, since there isn't ...
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Are pictures taken from ISS geolocalized?
I guess my question is "naive".
I get from https://images-api.nasa.gov some pictures of Earth from ISS without any description (just the mission number) or pictures of crewmembers.
Taken ...
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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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Lot 345 of Christie's "Voyage To Another World" auction supposedly has the only photo of Armstrong on the Moon, but isn't this one also? [closed]
Christie's press release Christie's Voyage to Another World: The Victor Martrin-Malburet Photograph Collection includes the following:
Lot 345, The only photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon, July ...
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Has a totally eclipsed Sun been photographed from low Earth orbit?
I'm hoping to get a sense of how much of the corona can be seen during an eclipse of the sun from outside of Earth's atmosphere.
Have any photographs been taken in the visible part of the spectrum, ...
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