There are numerous pictures, obviously, of the blackness of space from the shuttle, the space station, and even the moon. But they all suffer from being from the perspective of a camera, which is not sensitive enough to pick up the stars in the background when compared to the bright foreground objects (the limb of the Earth, the station, moon, etc). I've seen some photos that show a few of the brightest stars, but nothing special.
Are there any photos or eye witness accounts from astronauts of what it looks like to a human with night-adjusted vision? If I were in an orbit similar to the space station and looked away from the Earth, would I be able to see more stars than I ever could on Earth, or would it only be marginally better than the best terrestrial night viewing?
Answer
I haven't been to space :( and don't know of any accounts to point you to but I suspect that the view would be marginally better than that on earth.
First, the "black of space" would be really black i.e. no light. Even in dark skies there is a bit of scattered light in the atmosphere (even if just from scattered starlight) so you'd have higher contrast.
Additionally, you wouldn't have any "seeing" effects, the bluring of the starlight by the shifting atmosphere so the stellar images would be more concentrated. Not that you'd probably be able to consciously notice. The net effect would be to sharpen the stellar image on you eyes and increase the contrast a bit more.
I suspsect you'd see a few more stars for the above reasons, especially the latter as you eyes would have a better chance to detect light from the sharper stellar images. However, it wouldn't be a huge amount more as the stars are intrinsically faint and your eyes are only so senstive.
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