One of the arguments the folks who are convinced the NASA
Apollo missions were faked is that there are no stars in the
pictures, because if there were, then we'd be able to use
them to prove that they were taken from Earth, using
Parallax, and positioning equipment to triangulate the
positioning of the stars...
But, it seems that this argument falls apart... there ARE
stars in some of of the pictures... and not in others...
This is an image of Atlantis docked with Mir, taken by an
approaching Soyuz spacecraft... NO STARS, yet, we clearly
know that the Shuttle reaches orbit - we can see it from the
Earth.
Its a known fact that if you
don't leave a shutter open long enough, then you can't see
dimly lit objects... the white spacecraft and sun-lit
surface of the Earth is just too bright to allow the
relatively dim light from the stars to make an imprint on
the receptor.
The same would apply here... the
shutter speed is too quick to allow the stars to show up.
Payload restrictions made the
transport of telescope facilities to the Moon unfeasible,
and without these ordinary stellar photography would have
served no (scientific) purpose. However, even without such
facilities, the Moon does offer several advantages as an
observation platform. The near-absence of an atmosphere
means that stellar imaging is possible at many wavelengths
which are not visible from Earth. Long-exposure photos were
taken with a special far-ultraviolet camera by Apollo 16
astronauts on April 21, 1972 from the surface of the Moon.
Here are some that have been
identified... and yes, they are in the appropriate locations
for having been photographed from the surface of the moon.
Though stars would not normally
be visible to the naked eye during daylight, whether from
the Earth, the Moon, or on orbit, the planet Venus (which is
much brighter than any of the stars) was actually recorded
on film by astronaut Alan Shepard at the conclusion of his
second extravehicular activity, during the Apollo 14
mission. Shepard was preparing to ascend the ladder to
re-enter the lunar module Antares, when he likely noticed
Venus shining brightly next to the crescent Earth. He made a
series of photographs with his chest-mounted Hasselblad
camera, likely all at 1/250th second exposure, and differing
f-stops. Owing to its position closer to the Sun and its
complete coverage by clouds, Venus has a higher surface
brightness than Earth, and is indeed visible to the unaided
eye in broad daylight from Earth, given a sufficiently
transparent sky.
Here's the picture that Shepard
took:
Here is the same image, and
the next one on the roll, taken with a slightly different
bracketing, showing the location of Earth, and Venus.
The gain has been turned way up.
This was a prepared photo from
a website I got the information from... so I went to the
NASA gallery, and go the image, and tweaked it myself, to
see what I would find...
