Did the Apollo moon landing astronauts train for seeing with no atmosphere?

Question

I was just wondering and thinking about how things would look on the moon without any atmosphere.

Did they train to "see" without atmosphere while on earth?

Also how would things look without any atmosphere. I guess everything would look crystal clear but would it not kind of be disorienting?

Answer 1

The main problem the astronauts reported was being unable to judge distances. This was partly due to the extreme clarity (no haze in the distance) and also the smaller curvature (closer horizon). Several times they set out to walk to something that seemed nearby, only to discover it was much farther away than they thought.

Answer 2

In the Arctic, the same problem exists. Because of the cold (especially when all water is covered with ice), the air is extremely dry. There is a lot less pollution. And, the usual reference points are not there (for example, no trees on the hills, therefore you don't get the indirect clues, like the apparent size of trees, telling you if you are close to a small hill or far from a gigantic mountain.



Yes it can be disorienting. No we did not get training for that. And yet, we survived.



The situation on the Moon (from that aspect) would not have been much worst. They would have had enough to worry about far more important (and dangerous) things, like lack of sound clues (e.g., on Earth, when we walk close to a cliff, the "quality" of the sound changes as you get closer to the cliff), different gravity, having to physically turn to see sideways (the visor must be turned), etc.



Since the astronaut training did include some training in very dry area with no vegetation (desert), then they would have had experienced the lack of common clues for distances. Whether you want to call that "vision" training, I don't know.

Answer 3

I haven't seen anything to indicate that the astronauts went through any special training for *vision* concerns. Quite frankly, possible distortion from the glass of their helmets would be more of an issue than the clarity of vision.

The lack of atmosphere has cause some confusion (on Earth) among the less-than-scientifically-literate as distant objects in the photographs taken do not show the 'blurring' with distance that we typically associate with most photographs (subconsciously). This has led people to make numerous errors of assumption that are only corrected when you understand that the cameras were taking pictures of a landscape that is *different* - and in an airless environment.



But the astronauts certainly never reported any vision concerns while on the moon. (The human organism adapts to subtle changes in visual cues quite readily - - no special vision training is needed for scuba-diving for instance... and the differences caused by vision underwater would be far greater.)

Answer 4

My daughter had excellent vision but it slowly got blurry and she needed glasses. When we picked them up she looked at the sky and said, "The stars are all points, not blobs!" She forgot that. I stopped on a hill so she could look down at the lights in a town. When I flew from PA to AZ, I discovered how naturally hazy it was in the east, just from the forests and humidity. In neither case did it require re-learning to function; it simply extended a natural sense. I'm sure the same was true in the case of astronauts. A vacuum doesn't distort your vision, it clears it. As for the visual cues for distance that other answers noted, they also noted that's a quality of terrain, not vision. So no, they didn't have to train as if they had to function wearing funny glasses.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

actually you can see better and farther in absence of atmosphere as there is no pollution and deflections in the way of light between your eyes and the object you are looking at

Answer 7

No atmosphere is required to see.