Stars, what stars?

Dr. Neville Thomas Jones, Ph.D.

From the 1970 book, "First On The Moon: A Voyage With Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.," by Gene Farmer and Dora Hamblin, published by Michael Joseph Ltd., London, we read that,

"[Michael] Collin's job was flying the command and service module, and handling the celestial navigation. He navigated Apollo 11 out there, and he navigated it home again. Buzz Aldrin also had a few thoughts on that subject ...

'The stars are, as Jim Lovell said, your best friends. They sit there and you line up on them and you know where you are. ... For spacecraft navigation - getting there and back - we use thirty-seven stars - plus the earth, the sun and the moon. We don't use Venus, but we do use Polaris, Rigel, Capella, Canopus, Sirius, Antares, Vega, Arcturus, Altair and a big one called Fomalhaut which is less widely known. You sight a pair of stars and mark on each one. Then the computer will calculate spacecraft attitude.' "

That's very interesting, because when Patrick Moore asked the three astronuts a direct question, during the post-flight interview, about the visibility of the stars during the period of time that they were allegedly photographing the solar corona (a small ring of light around the Sun), they all denied seeing any. This could not have been put down to any sort of glare on the lunar surface, since Collins was not on the lunar surface (just as Armstrong and Aldrin weren't), nor would Collins have been wearing a visor. The stars all around the Sun, even quite close to it in angular extent, would be very bright indeed. You can verify this for yourselves if you pick a time and day when Venus is above your horizon, just hold your thumb up to obscure the immense glare of the Sun (never look directly at the Sun at any time other than sunrise or sunset) and, lo and behold, you can see Venus very easily. So it would have been for the astronuts; by looking at the heavens in all directions other than directly towards the Sun, they would have seen the stars very easily. It would have been impossible to miss them. Unless the astronuts were blind. Or unless, of course, they were not where we are told that they were. The visors could not have been so dark that the stars became invisible, since the astronuts were able to see without difficulty in the shadows of the 'landing module'.

Here is the actual response and they certainly do not sound like men who are speaking with any authority on the issue (in this clip you will hear Patrick Moore ask the question, Neil Armstrong reply and then Michael Collins come in at the end with, "I don't remember seeing any.") :

So, a few days after returning, their navigator, who needed to mark the brightest stars in various constellations in order to rendezvous with the Moon in one direction, and the World in the other, "[could not] remember seeing any." Hmmm, I see, said the blind man. Did he spend his time looking directly at the Sun?

Notice, also, that Neil Armstrong clearly implied that they could see them "through the optics." Whatever these 'optics' were, they obviously did not include the best medium-format cameras available either then or now - Hasselblad - because no stars were ever photographed on any 'Apollo mission'.

Figure 1: Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, living a lie?