Newsgroups: sci.space.history
From: henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Visible Stars
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 20:24:12 GMT

>>Facing into the darkness, he expected to be able
>>to see stars but only saw blackness. At the very least he expected to
>>see the brighter stars but no. He said he had spent a good deal of time
>>thinking about it but could not figure out why the stars were not visible.
>>Any ideas?

One possibility is that he was unable to focus on them.  Early
high-altitude fighter pilots noticed a similar problem, finding that with
a featureless sky, it was quite difficult to make your eyes focus on
infinity so you could scan the sky properly for distant targets.  They
found that it helped immensely to have something like a wingtip within
your field of view, so you could work outward from something moderately
distant.
--
The space program reminds me        |  Henry Spencer   henry@spsystems.net
of a government agency.  -Jim Baen  |      (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)