Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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degree of adaptation out of. I could notice a difference in the numbers of stars I could see, first going after the sun first went down and later on then when I'd be well night adapted at the end of the period. This is some 37 minutes later when you're approaching sunrise so you'd have a -- I suppose actual there was a/period there where you're really dark adapting of about a half hour, 33 minutes, something of that order.

Did you have an opportunity to count the stars?

No, this is one of those things that went down the drain. I thought about this on a subsequent orbit but I didn't spend any time on it. I feel that my vision, the numbers of stars I could see was not appreciably increased. Now, I had expected to see a lot more stars. I had thought they'd really a jump out once you got above the atmosphere but I--like it was in debriefing -- I think to the being out on the desert on a dark night in summer when the air is very clear and dry, and you know what it is like out around Reno and some of those places; how the sky really comes out and night and you can/see a million stars. and that's what it looked like. It didn't look like any more than that.

This was a general impression but not anything you can put your finger on?

That's right.

You had planned at the end of the second and third orbits--during the second and third orbits to run the star counts and we had the areas lined up U-O-RI-AN, CAS-I-O-PIA, and what was the other one--it was off a little triangle area by SERIOUS off O-RI-AN. We had those three areas lined up and it was just--I was doing systems monitoring at that time rather than counting