Why is no stars in any of the moon landing pictures?

Answer 1

The reason you see no stars in any of the pictures from the moon landing (or in any of the pictures of Earth taken from the space shuttle) is because the light of the sun, reflecting off the moon (or Earth) is simply too bright, and it washes out the light from the dim stars in the background.

To understand this, you need to know a little about how cameras work. When the shutter release on a camera is pressed, the shutter opens for a fraction of a second, allowing the light-sensitive material behind the shutter to be exposed. The amount of light that is allowed through is controlled both by how wide the shutter opens (aperture) and for how long it's open (shutter speed). The brighter the object being photographed the less light you want to let through to the film. Too much exposure will create an unrecognizable photograph; you will simply see a white blob. This is critical to understand because it is at the heart of the "missing" stars.

The surface of the moon, in direct sunlight (as it was during the Apollo missions), is very bright. So bright, in fact, that it can create shadows on the Earth in the middle of the night from 238,000 miles away. That fact alone means any camera used on the moon's surface must have the settings as such to no overexpose the film. But the astronauts weren't just taking pictures of the moon; they also took pictures of each other. The cameras used by the crew were set up to take pictures of the lunar surface, other astronauts in white spacesuits, in a bright white environment, in the middle of the lunar morning, in direct sunlight. The fact that no stars showed up in the images is to be expected. Had there been stars there would have been more evidence of a hoax.

You can test this theory yourself. Tonight, grab your camera and stand inside your house near the window with all the lights on (you can even open the window to make sure there is no obstruction between yourself and the stars). Now position something in front of the window yet still inside, in direct lamp light. Using your camera (it doesn't matter if you use the auto settings or change the settings yourself) take a bunch of pictures of the object in front of you (remember that object is your focus, you are trying to get pictures of your vase, not the sky!). Now look at the images and count the number of stars in your pictures. The sky behind the well lit object in your house is black without stars, and that was just using lamplight not direct sunlight.

Incidentally, there are pictures taken of stars by a crew on the moon. Apollo 16 brought a special UV camera to the lunar surface for the specific purpose of doing some astronomy. There are hundreds of pictures of stars, just not in the pictures of the bright lunar surface.

See related link for a picture of the moon from Space - no stars!!

Answer 2

In the moon landing pictures, the stars are not visible because the astronauts were on the sunlit side of the moon where the brightness of the lunar surface made stars appear very dim and not visible in the photographs. The cameras they used were set to expose for the bright lunar landscape, causing the stars to be too faint to capture in the images.