"You certainly CAN see stars from the moon, and if light from the sun and earth are not interfering, the sight must be nothing less than dazzling. You would never have to contend with bad weather, or with other kinds of atmospheric disturbance.
You may wonder why stars don't appear in photographs that were taken during lunar landings. Keep in mind that the astronauts were not interested in stellar observation when they were on the moon. The photos were to document the landing itself and to highlight surface features. There were some modifications to the cameras taken to the moon, but as I understand it, they still had features designed to "optimize" exposure by doing things like controlling the over-all average of "gray" that an exposure would produce. There can only be so much exposure in order for lit objects in a scene to give good detail. While the stars are breathtaking, they are still appearing as tiny specks of light. If the camera were set to capture the light of the stars (longer exposure), the other objects in the scene would have been completely washed out.
Photographing stars is not extremely difficult, but it's not easy, either. Try it with your camera. See if you can get good images of the stars just by taking a snapshot in a very dark place on a clear night. If your camera has any auto features, it will probably "complain". At the same location, try taking a photo of a buddy using your flash (so you get decent detail) and where there are also stars in the background. See what you get. "
"This is usually the first thing HBs talk about when discussing the Hoax. That amazes me, as it's the silliest assertion they make. However, it appeals to our common sense: when the sky is black here on Earth, we see stars. Therefore we should see them from the Moon as well.
I'll say this here now, and return to it many times: the Moon is not the Earth. Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to fail us.
The Moon's surface is airless. On Earth, our thick atmosphere scatters sunlight, spreading it out over the whole sky. That's why the sky is bright during the day. Without sunlight, the air is dark at night, allowing us to see stars.
On the Moon, the lack of air means that the sky is dark. Even when the Sun is high off the horizon during full day, the sky near it will be black. If you were standing on the Moon, you would indeed see stars, even during the day.
So why aren't they in the Apollo pictures? Pretend for a moment you are an astronaut on the surface of the Moon. You want to take a picture of your fellow space traveler. The Sun is low off the horizon, since all the lunar landings were done at local morning. How do you set your camera? The lunar landscape is brightly lit by the Sun, of course, and your friend is wearing a white spacesuit also brilliantly lit by the Sun. To take a picture of a bright object with a bright background, you need to set the exposure time to be fast, and close down the aperture setting too; that's like the pupil in your eye constricting to let less light in when you walk outside on a sunny day.
So the picture you take is set for bright objects. Stars are faint objects! In the fast exposure, they simply do not have time to register on the film. It has nothing to do with the sky being black or the lack of air, it's just a matter of exposure time. If you were to go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used, you won't see any stars!
It's that simple. Remember, this the usually the first and strongest argument the HBs use, and it was that easy to show wrong. Their arguments get worse from here. "
