Venus in Apollo 11 image?

[onebigmonkey]

Scouring through Apollo 11 images for anything new and different I spotted these objects in AS11-36-5328 and 9





They appear in different sources of the photographs

Granted blemishes are common in Apollo images, so a benchmark for me is whether they occur in a similar place. Here are the two images rotated around the object in question.



So is it a blemish or something more interesting?

The problem is that it's difficult to say which direction we're looking in! We have nothing in the transcripts mentioning the photographs being taken though we do have stars 17, 30 and 34 referenced through the sextant (Regor, Atria and Memkent respectively).

Any suggestions?

Venus is always the first port of call for bright objects, is it that?

[ajv]

This is after S-IVB separation and there's got to be a bunch of debris floating around. Perhaps even an adapter panel.

[onebigmonkey]

I have literally just been considering that possibly myself. In both images there is another fainter spot but their locations differ by some distance, they could equally be other panels or other stellar objects. They do not have the typical features of the 'blue spot' blemishes that appear on many Apollo images.

The only argument against this is that the photos were taken some time after LM extraction - possibly even after it has been sent on its way to the moon, and while there is a lot of debris to be found in photos immediately after separation from the SIV-B there is nothing else in these two (or the one preceding it). That said, we do have evidence suggesting that the panels 'followed' them for some time.

Whatever it is it's interesting

[bknight]

Do you have the orientation of the CSM at the time of the images?