Question about 'stars'.

[BertL]

Hello,

I'm working on a website on the moon hoax, and I was looking at the photograph AS15-88-11863. When I looked at the high-resolution image (Direct link, long load), I saw some white dots and stuff in the sky.

It is highly unlikely that the white dots in the sky are stars, because when looking at the brightness of the astronaut, you can see a very short exposure time was used. If the white dots are not stars, what are they?

Personally, I was thinking of dirt on the scanning machine, because there also seems to be a hair-like thing in the mountains, above the flag. Just wanted to make sure.

- BertL

[iamspartacus]

Zooming in on the image shows that a lot of the "stars" are little lines and swirls and not points. I would guess that these are artifacts from a scan.

The "hair-like thing in the mountains, above the flag" shows it to be the "C" Mountain from which the famous "C" Rock probably came.

[JayUtah]

Contamination on the transparency and/or scanner is the most likely explanation. Even the cleanest photo labs have dust. One way to test that theory is to look for the same kinds of artifacts in deep shadows or other dark places in the photo that aren't sky. Then you can be sure that whatever they are, they aren't stars.