I don't know about Apollo astronauts using a tripod-mounted camera for visible light photography of the stars, but the Apollo 16 astronauts did use a special camera to photograph the Earth in UV light. Because Earth shines very weakly in UV, those images did record background stars. One of the bits of ammunition that I use when dealing with "the moon landings were faked" people (I get a lot of them) is to point out to them that at the time the Apollo 16 images were taken no one had created a sky survey in UV light. The UV images of Earth were released to the public and no one gave a second thought to the positions and magnitudes (in UV) of background stars. Recently, however, some clever high school and college students have compared the Apollo 16 images against modern UV star charts to see if what the Apollo 16 UV camera saw matches what is now known about the UV sky. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The UV stars imaged in the same field of view with Earth seen by Apollo 16 astronauts match exactly the UV star field that is predicted to be visible if a photograph of Earth were made from the surface of the Moon on that date. So, how could NASA have faked the UV star field if in 1972 no UV sky map existed? Seth Jarvis -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of baxman2@comcast.net Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 6:51 PM To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] In The Shadow of the Moon Movie Today I saw an excellent movie about the Apollo Moon Program, at the Salt Lake City Broadway Theater, called, "In The Shadow of the Moon". One thing that I have noticed from astronaut space pictures; they never show any stars in the sky. I assume that camera contrast resolution might have something to this. The astronauts claim that they could see stars in the sky. Any comments on this problem? Even when the astronauts were going into the Moon's shadow, I didn't see any stars. Although, that could be because the camera was aimed directly at the lunar landscape. Sincerely, J. David Baxter _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com