Some may recall how one of the Mercury astronauts claimied to have seen strange lights during his mission. (I cannot recall which astronaut, however.) Since the introduction of the space shuttle; hence, frequent visits into space, it has been reported how astronauts have actually seen particles (expelled from the sun and thrown toward earth by the solar wind) pass through their eyeballs.* Could this explain what the Mercury astronaut actually saw? I am hoping some SDopers may have additional information to offer about this.
*Ref: Discovery Channel’s “How The Universe Was Made” series
If you mean John Glenn’s “fireflies”, I believe Scott Carpenter later determined that they were tiny specks of frost that the capsule would shed whenever it entered daylight.
Yes, a story I read mentioned droplets of water. In the outpouring of news articles about John Glenn these last few days, that was mentioned somewhere (inevitably, of course). The particular colors seen in those drops were said to be still unexplained. (Greenish, if I remember what I read.)
