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Clavius   PHOTO ANALYSIS
  a mysterious shadow
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NASA: AS11-37-5437

Note 3: There are no stars visible in the sky.

The conspiracist claims this is a photo of the lunar surface taken from the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle. That's correct, however Eagle was not sitting on the lunar surface at the time, but was in fact several thousand feet above it. The crater at lower right is Maskelyne, a well known waypoint on Eagle's descent trajectory.

The dark area marked by Note 3 is not the blackness of space, but the part of the lunar surface that was in shadow. The demarcation under Note 3 running the entire width of the photo is in fact the moon's terminator, or the line between the lighted and shaded portion of the lunar surface. The flight plan called for Eagle to land near the terminator so that the lunar surface at the landing site would not be as intensely heated in the sun, and to provide deep shadows to aid in the landing. The actual landing site is near the center of the photograph.

See here for a general discussion of the visibility of stars in space.

Note E: An unknown object is casting a shadow on the lunar surface.

The object is hardly unknown; it's Eagle's front left RSC thruster (steering jet). And it's not casting a shadow, it's a silhouette. The RCS quad lies just outside the commander's window and appears in many photos taken from that window.

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