I saw the NOVA documentary on the race to the Moon-very well done. There was quite a bit of discussion about the Russian’s efforts in space, and I remember that there was something VERY odd about the film clip(that the Soviets released) of Alexei Leonov’s first space walk. First, the background of the earth was vert hazy, and greenish in color-none of the US photos ever showed such a tone. Second, the reflection of the sun in leonov’s helemet visor shows THREE points of light! As far as i know, leonov actually did the first spacewalk-i am quite sure of this. However, was the film clip faked? I saw a reference to this in one of james Oberg’s books (RED STAR IN ORBIT), but was never able to find much more about this-any emigre Russina experst know about this?
There are any number of things that could cause weird colors in a photograph. Improper exposure, improper processing, using the wrong type of film for the amount of radiation that’s up there, and so on. It is my understanding that the space suit visors consist of more than one piece of transparent material, which leads to multiple reflections. Whenever you see a sun flare in a photograph or movie, there are at least two (usually three) spots; this is the sun reflecting off each of the lens elements seperately.
As friedo said the greenish haze was most probably due to inaccurate exposure or to radiation exposing the film. I have also read that some if the film and photos might have been altered of completely faked. Even with this speculation it is generally accepted that the space walk was real.
For some back ground on the Voskhod there is an excellent web site for reference about the space race Encyclopedia Astronautica and paticularly the Voskhod 2
Definitely take a look at Threll’s link. It seems unlikely to me that Leonov and Belayev would make up such a hair raising story, which involves suit rigidity, partial depressurization, poorly working seals and braking rockets, and wolves. The only thing suspicious to me is that after nearly burning up on reentry, they appear to have had an uneventful parachute descent, perhaps for the first time in the history of the Soviet space program.
In other words, it was a fairly routine, shoestring Soviet operation on the bleeding edge of safety. There are a number of dead cosmonauts who silently attest to Soviet willingness to go to extreme risks to retain an advantage in the space race.
Incidentally, I’ve seen a lot of Soviet-era space footage that seems to overly compensate for the teal color of their spacecraft. I’m no photographer however, so someone else will have to help with that.
Oh, yeah. Here’s a picture of a later EVA suit. Notice that it has a faceplate and a sun visor, as friedo noted.