>>17946669yes, this did occur to me. I think its a question of whether the light reflected from the surface and hitting the lense would be enough to affect the image being taken of the sky (even when the ground and sun arent in the frame). This is the case when the exposure and gain are sufficient for taking images of the stars.
In the case of the astronauts on the moon, they would have set up their cameras to capture images of the moon surface. With a typical dynamic range, this would not capture the stars, which are quite weak sources of light.
Remember that the Soviets and other nations were able to track the mission in real time via telescopes as well as detect the radio signals, so proving that they were really there to others would not be the focus..
