These shots of John Young and James Irwin - like many Apollo photos - show a lunar sky without stars (J). Yet with no atmosphere on the moon, stars should be visible - a fact confirmed by Maria Blyzinsky, Curator of Astronomy at the Greenwich Observatory, London. If NASA could not hope to recreate the lunar sky, they may have opted for simple black backdrops. NASA claim that the sunlight was so strong it overpowered the light from the stars. On the shadow side of the landing modules, there are plaques (K) with the American flag and the words 'United States' quite bright and clearly visible, but the gold foil around the plaques is in near darkness. Studio spotlights highlighting these areas, or technicians retouching the prints, could have caused this effect.


NASA claims the strange shape (E) - in this shot taken from the Lunar Module while it was 95 km above the moon's surface - is a shadow cast by the Command Module's rocket. But when larger aircraft fly at lower altitudes over the Earth, they do not cast such huge and defined shadows.