What does the sky look like to human eyes from orbit?

Question

There are numerous pictures, obviously, of the blackness of space from the shuttle, the space station, and even the moon. But they all suffer from being from the perspective of a camera, which is not sensitive enough to pick up the stars in the background when compared to the bright foreground objects (the limb of the Earth, the station, moon, etc). I've seen some photos that show a few of the brightest stars, but nothing special.Are there any photos or eye witness accounts from astronauts of what it looks like to a human with night-adjusted vision? If I were in an orbit similar to the space station and looked away from the Earth, would I be able to see more stars than I ever could on Earth, or would it only be marginally better than the best terrestrial night viewing?

Answer 1

When the ISS is on the "night side" of the Earth, the sky looks like what you would see from the top of a very high mountain at night, where most ground-based observatories are. It was found during the early days of spaceflight that stars are not visible if sunlight illuminates any nearby object or structure in your visual filed. Likewise, peering out from an illuminated space in the ISS makes it difficult to see stars. Stars are MUCH LESS bright than even a fairly dim light source in a room. The Hubble Space Telelscope incorporates features that prevent any sunlight, or reflected sunlight from enetering its optical path, even when it is on the "day side".