GaryN, I'm having a hard time even trying to understand what are you trying to say because there are a lot of non-sequiturs here. Let's see.
I was reading about William Herschel the astronomer, and he believed that it was only Earths atmosphere that made the stars, planets and even the Sun visible from Earth, and that outside of an atmosphere of sufficient density and composition, nothing is visible
Fascinating indeed. But as it has been said this astronomer lived more than two centuries ago. First of all, have you bothered to try and understand the reasons why Herschel said that? maybe where based on well debunked or outdated measurements, or maybe they are even illogical. I think you are probably trying to make an authority argument here. Herschel also used to think that there was vegetation in the Sun, do you think it is like that also just because he said that? It's more important to know HOW he said that.
Second thing: I'm uncapable of finding any source about your claim that Herschel thought that the stars where visible only because of earth's atmosphere. The only verifiable source (even the only plain source) that I can find is that says something remotely similar is this:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1981JRASC..75...46KWhat Herschel said was that the solar atmosphere was emmiting light like an aurora over it's dark surface. Nothing like what you claim at all.
"In this case, radiant heat will at least partly, if not chiefly, consist, if I may be permitted the expression, of invisible light; that is to say, of rays coming from the sun, that have such a momentum as to be unfit for vision. And admitting, as is highly probable, that the organs of sight are only adapted to receive impressions from particles of a certain momentum, it explains why the maximum of illumination should be in the middle of the refrangible rays; as those which have greater or less momenta are likely to become equally unfit for the impression of sight."
Ok now I see
what source you are dealing with. The problem here seems to be of basic reading comprehension GaryN. Nowhere in this text mentions Herschel saying that earth's atmosphere made stars and sun visible from the surface. Let's have a bit of historical context here:
This is 1800, he was studying how different materials for different lenses affected the color and brighness of stars (not to be confused one with the other). There where lenses that let red light to pass better than blue light, this was the reason that some stars appear redder with those lenses. Remember that red and blue are in the visible range of light's spectrum, this does not meant that white light was converted to red light of blue to red or red to blue, this only meant that some frequencies where attenuated more than others. The part you are quoting talks about the discovery of infrared light (the first time thet non-visible light was noticed oin history). He understanded that it was an invisible kind of light (colors beyond red) because of how the progression of heating increassed due to color illumination. This has nothing to do with the sun, with earth's atmosphere, even with planets and stars. I don't know where you are reading this ideas.
his principle applied also to light with a higher velocity, what we would not call UV and up
What? Not velocity men, but momentum! those are different things, and no UV light is'nt faster than visible light.
However, looking a bit more at what he said, I may be putting words in his mouth, as in this statement he did say the Sun had a bright outer layer
Yeah, totally reading what you want here. And also, what does his model about the Sun had to do with the idea of earth's atmosphere converting light into visible? why are you quoting this?
We now know from Apollo though that stars and galaxies can be seen from the Lunar surface in far UV, as seen from the FUVC device
Well yeah, not only from apollo we know stars emmit in UV light you know?
Why they couldn't have used one of their cameras from the shaddow of the lander to photograph them on visible light at the same time, I don't know
Why does that experiment should prove your "point"? Why is it necessary to be in the shaddow of the module to make sucha photograph of the stars? Even if there was atmospheric scattering like on earth, it wouldn't matter if you are making photos from a shadow or not (I say this because maybe you are saying that sun's light would in some way interfere with the observation of some other stars (another field of view obviously)).
Anyway, all I have ever wanted of NASA is to perform some experiments, empirical science, to determine what is and is not visible from clear space, but they won't do it.
Man this is incredibly arrogant. Are you proposing an experiment or a project? then why you think this is the way of doing it? Do you even bothered to search about it in the fist place. Not only did NASA have shown how many objects look like above earth's atmosphere, it have been shown even before NASA existed, and theorized even before that! NASA is not the only research institution in the world capable of explaining it. Even with that there is this thing called chemistry and this thing called spectrography in physics that allows you to understand the optical behaviour of differen substances (like gasses like those in the atmosphere) in different conditions (quantity, temperature, pressure, angles, etc...). All of this is supported by the predictions of quantum mechanics. Do you really thin a camera in space is necessary to know how the sun actually looks like in the vacuum of space? certainly NASA has collateraly verified this as many other fields of science while making their more precisse and detailed observations (with other goals). This is so absurd as to say why NASA hasn't done an experiment on the Law of inertia in space. well this is not a scientific goal for NASA because it has been demonstrated with many many other experiments and observations. NASA can only account for more and more evidence of this law in the inmensa mountain of evidence provided by other means. By the way a camera can see thing with differnt colors, with false colors and all that you could want, but a spectrometer can tell you exactly what color is each thing and how is distributed that color in terms of intensity along the spectrum. The atmosphere can absorb, scatter, and reflect some specific colors or kind of light but this does not mean that the color is changed and swapped with another, only that there are going to be gaps and hills in the spectral signature of the stars you are observing. We can from earth distinguish wich atmospheric gasses account for those distortions (as I tell you this distortions don't even swap colors just diminish or increase the magnitude as a function of frequency) and subtract that from a spectral signature of a star. This is inmensily more explicit than a camera photo of a star, it tells you exactly how it looks like in real life, without an athmosphere if you are interested in that.
Not only NASA gathers this spectral information about stars, every single space agency has done this, every single ground based observatory has done this from the discovery of spectral lines (nearly two centuries ago). Do you really think NASA has the duty to come with some answer to your totally off-topic question?
I am wondering then what the views of the Sun in the simulator are based on, as there are no actual photographs of the Sun from outside of Earths atmosphere, and none were taken by the Apollo crews while in cislunar space
Man are you serious? There are plenty of visible light images of the sun and the stars taken from space! Who cares about apollo! do you think the only spacecraft that has gone so far was that? we even have observatories at the L1 point (farther than the moon or any influence).
Just to show you a bunch of easily findable images from the ISS:
SOHO can image the Sun ar wavelengths our eyes can not see, but has no conventional camera
False. SOHO has a camera that performs with the same optical principles as your own camera (they obviously would differ in technical details). There are plenty of Solar Observatories, for example NASA's SDO. SDO sees in visible light with its AIA 4500 armstrong instrument.
The first image in the second row is from that instrument:
from the Cupola, the line of sight to the Sun was through Earths atmophere, and not looking away from Earth, which they can not do from the Cupola. There are no portholes facing away from Earth on the ISS, or none that are in use anyway.
This is the most absurd of all. I just show you several images of the sun from the ISS well above the atmosphere. You know, the cupola is not the only window in the ISS:
"There are several windows throughout the ISS, including the Lab nadir window (WORF), the seven windows in the cupola, the window in the Japanese Kibo module, thirteen windows in the Russian Service Module, two in the Russian docking module, and a window in each Soyuz."Not only that but you ommit the fact that there have been plenty of other missions even space stations. What about Skylab? What about the Mir? what about soviet astronauts? what about other american astronauts? what about images taken without the need of an astronaut by several spacecrafts? what about the astronauts of the ISS going out in an EVA? do you really think that as the sun gets high in the ISS skies the astronauts that are working outside suddenly see how the sun dissapears into invisible forms of light?. Do you really think the cupola orientation is the limitation to get "real sun images"?
By the way, Who said that the cupola can't be reoriented? in fact
"the ISS did a 180 degree yaw last week, to facilitate the undocking of the Progress."
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-ISS-always-face-the-Earth
You can see that the view is very restricted, and is limited to a line of sight which must pass through Earths atmosphere. Yes, the atmosphere is thinner up there, but the column of atmosphere the LOS passes through is much deeper than the LOS we see through when looking away from Earth, as illustrated in this graphic.
Why are you so sure of what you are saying? ISS is well above the atmosphere, from the cupola you can clearly see the sun above it even if it was the only dang window in space and always oriented like that. If you think there is a large colum of gas that sums up as to change the apparence of the sun then why don`t you show us your calculations please? It should be fairly easy, you just have to know the density profile of our atmosphere and integrate along the line of sight of your choice from the cupola, knowing only the ISS altitude and that earth is a sphere you should come up with the real amount of gas that covers the view. And only with that in mind you could say something so sure about yourself.
It is a forward scatter process of UV/EUV light from the Sun that creates a beam of visible light that we see from Earth, so the atmosphere is acting as a kind of optical transformer.
Is this your idea? because I never heard of any physics that support that assertion. If it's not your idea I would like to see your sources. If it is your idea I would like to see your theoretical reasoning and your experimental evidence for that claim.
In real physics NO, no gas act as light transformer like that. Just fluorescense, fosphorescense and scattering can change light frequency and no single one of them emmits the resulting light in a beam or can make us to resolve the image of the sun, is dispersed light in all directions. Atmospherics gases are well known due to spectroscopy and NO they do not fosforesce. They fluoresce a little (the airglow that Watsisname was talking about) but is so puny and has so little to do with all what you are saying...
The only thin that light does is scattering, but the important part of scattering is not that but filtering certain frequencies of light. Absorption, reflection, difracction, refraction, none of this make what you say. The currently accepted theoretical framework don't show that, the evidence also contrast with that idea. If you have it it's just simply because you are ignorant of it, not skeptical about NASA.
They did take images of the Sun from the lunar surface, and the Moon supposedly has no atmosphere, but the LADEE mission showed that there is an atmosphere of nanometer sized dust grains, and it is known that these dust grains when subject to UV/EUV light will produce a white, full spectrum light, which is what illuminated the astronauts quite brightly when the centre of the beam was passing over their location.
Again: source please? The extremely tenuous "atmosphere" of the moon is much more vacuum than a vacuum chamber on earth. I feel that you don't even have orders of magnitude here. Do you really think the sky looks a little white from the lunar surface? how much?
by the way you insist with the uv trasnformation in visible but the issue is that even considering that how would that process form an image of the sun in the lunar surface (like a beam)? the light from the sun would be scattered uniformly in the sky at best. Instead ob observing a visible sun you would see a whiter sky. But the dust suspended around the moon is orders of magnitude less dense that you might think. By the way, this would never prove that outside of the moon the sun gets invisible and on the surface visivble. What kind of reasoning are you making here?
The Sun from the lunar surface is much larger than it should be with the lens they were using, and that is put down to camera optics, but I think this is actually how the Sun appeared to their eyes
Are you sure that the sun appeared bigger on the Moon? show us please. And please link that information to make your point because I still can't understand what's the goal here.
Thanks for listening to my theory
This is not a theory, I'm barely convinced that this is even a standing hypothesis.
So if the Sun is visible in space, as NASA claims
This is the kind of phrases that make you sound like a conspiracy theorist. You see, you would be probably unable to find a NASA reference on that matter. Because the fact that the sun is visible far from the atmosphere is something that all the scientific community claims. NASA is a ridicusly small appendix of that community if you are asking for such questions. I feel there is a misconception about the role that NASA plays and the place it occupies in Physic's research as a global thing.
but rather believe it could be used to demonstrate the inconsistencies in NASAs photos and explanations
SpaceEngine does not have to show the inconsistencies in your alleged theory either.
Something interesting that I was reading was how different total solar eclipses and their effects appear in person vs what you can capture with a camera- mainly because our eyes are much more sensitive to changes in light than a camera is
What does this have to do with your "theory"? I find interesting how optics is a playground for missconceptions and deception. The fact you are mentioning (I would like also to know what are you refering to here) does not support any assertion you would like about how light behaves. People tend to talk about light as if it would distort and change as someones mind pleases. There are laws there my friend.
And what happens to that blocked UV? It doesn't just disappear, conservation of energy. Some molecules in the upper atmosphere will emit IR for up to 5 minutes when struck by UV, so in effect is being transformed
I think that in fact here you are describing fluorescence. But the idea of the sun been an atmospheric fluorescence phenomena is as science-disrupting as the flat earth model. You would have to fight against physics, chemistry, atmospheric sciences, probably you would be pushed even into aerodynamics and mechanics if you want to discuss it too the end. Your fight is not against NASA is against Science. something that we prectice in other countries, and in other ages.
I don't understand why only NASA can do it, and that no other space capable nation has a space based telescope
Others nations (spain, italy, france, germany, japan, china, russia, india, canada) are not only capable but some of them have even lunched several space telescopes, including in the optical range.
Watsisname, I have studied nearly all the instruments sent on various missions in space, and am also familiar with the methods of light creation and propagation and attenuation
Oh my god, another argument from authority without showing any of it.
The Hipparcos instrument was not a regular camera connected to a telescope, and plus, you will not find any pretty photos from it, just as you will not find any from any of the supposedly visible light telescopes listed on the wiki page.
MMMmmm yes it was. Also GAIA is doing the same. It makes detections with a CCD mesh of pixels (like a digital everyday camera) in the visible range, and you know what? billions of stars are coming visible, and GAIA is quite far away from earth and the moon I can assure you.