Can The Unaided Eye See Luminaries, questioning atmosphere's role

For years I've wondered this: are distant stars (and galaxies) ie. "the heavens" visible to the naked eye and cameras, or is it just the refractive properties of Earth's atmosphere that makes such luminaries noticeable? Stars give off unimaginable quantities of photons each and every instant, but in the final analysis, it is a finite number. And astronomical distances are humongous to the point of being almost unimaginable. The shower of finite photon emissions would have to eventually thin out. I'm thinking that were it not for the twinkling effect caused by our atmosphere, we couldn't see a distant star because it's size would be too infinitesimal. I base this theory largely on the fact that photographs taken by our Moon expedition show a starless black sky. When I proposed this query before, some poster countered with the claim that the quality of photographic equipment carried by the moon astronauts was not capable of picking up star images. But now, that reply seems absurd to me. Assuming those were analog cameras, they should rightly pick up starlight. Of course, the Moon has no atmosphere to speak of.

hubble space telescope as well as any other orbiting or launched satellite with a camera/telescope can capture starlight and they don't have atmospheres.

I'm not sure what you mean by "twinkling effect" and how this would make light from stars visible when you hypothesize that the photons don't make it to us.

This post has been edited by mudderrunner on Nov 17 2010, 12:17 AM

Telescopes aside, I refer to the unaided eye.

Oh, some photons make it to us alright.

How can you possibly question "twinkling effect"?

I surmise that were it not for the atmosphere serving to refract a sparse pinpoint stream of photons into significantly broader coverage, that we would see only black, as we saw in photos of the moon landing/exploration.

Well, it's a thought.

I think I understand now. Basically, things get smaller with increased distance, and stars are very far away so the width of photons that reach your eye would be extremely small. I'm not sure if the eye needs a certain width of photon emission to 'see'.

Read this.

http://www.physlink.com/Education/askexperts/ae323.cfm

Excellent ...many thanks!