The Mystery of Starry Night's Dark Earth
Guess what's sitting there, in nice clear text, on the main page of their web site?
"Ask a question"
We're getting to some mind-blowing stuff here!
So Starry Night says of their pro 6 software;
"Starry Night Pro is a powerful program designed for those with a serious interest in astronomy. Increase your in-the-field observing success with features such as the Events Finder to choose targets, or customized Observing Lists for a specific night or object of interest. Print out three-view star hopping charts customized to your equipment to effortlessly guide you to challenging objects. With extensive data sets, advanced telescope control, and comprehensive observational tools you'll soon transform your computer into a sophisticated virtual observatory."
Certainly, the software is not perfect. I am not a professional astronomer, though some who are use this as a tool and like it. I use it to study the night sky.
What is important are Starry Night's numbers. At the time of Armstrong's exit from the LM, the apparent magnitude of Sirius , the brightest star in the sky was -1.47, so to your favor I will call that -2.0 to make the calculation easier. I will make Sirius more bright, to your advantage. The Earth is apparent magnitude -16.28 and I will again adjust to your advantage to make my calculation easier.
Now, I challenge you to find a data base, academic or commercial that is at variance from these numbers by any meaningful degree. Look at the numbers used by academics on THAT VERY DAY and you will find Sirius to be about -1.47 and the earth from the moon -16.28. Starry night may not be perfect, but these numbers here are quite accurate, produce others if you can. I would welcome your challenge in this regard.
-2.0 to -16.0 is a difference of 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 x 2.51 (2.51 x itself 14 times). That gives 984,854. I did the math to your favor. The Earth was roughly one million times as bright as Sirius that evening and Starry Night software, though listing the magnitudes accurately, does not seem to do their usually good job of conveying this difference in some qualitative sense by showing the earth to be fairly bright.
As a matter of fact, you cannot see it and one would think it was not even in the lunar sky that night judging by the software's visual.
Do I think this is proof of a hoax, absolutely not. But knowing Apollo fraudulent, when i see this stuff it makes me wonder. And I love Starry night software and will continue to use it. It's a great tool as long as one has others.
