Howdy Icarus! Welcome to the forum.
I think I see the crux of your problem here as related to your question. In your opening post, you wrote:
My initial intention was to reveal Stars in the blackness of space. I wanted to research the 'Why No Stars in Moon pics' theory. I am a Professional Photographer. I have Photoshop. I opened these two images in PS (I will either post or link or whatever, later) and increased the Levels to reveal stars in the blackness. At first I thought 'Great; there are stars'. However, I overlay the 2nd image and did the same, lowering the opacity to align with the image below it. Content with the alignment, and selecting between the two images, something was revealed.
(Emphasis added)
Your error is in assuming that the dots you found were, in fact, stars.
They are not.
What are they? Well, it they don't match up from image to image, then you can safely rule them out as anything that was actually in the scene photographed. That is to say, it is "noise". I use the term loosely; although it is usually used in reference to transmission and reception, it is also valid when describing any spurious data on a detector (which, technically, camera film is) or in an image. The 'noise hypothesis' is testable in several different ways, from the general (If you photograph a very black object using a film camera and daylight settings, then digitize the result and adjust the levels, do you get noise?) to the specific (After adjusting the levels on images in question (thanks for listing them, btw), did you check the shadows in the foreground to see if they showed dots, and -if so - did
those dots match-up on consecutive images).
When you first adjusted your levels and saw dots on the black, your first thought should not have been, 'Great, there are stars,' but rather, 'I've got something, are they stars?' Matching it with a consecutive pic was a valid test
for eliminating the possibility that they are stars.
Having thus eliminated the possibility of them being stars, your whole question as stated...
To make this more clear as a question, and bearing in mind my knowledge of celestial movement and observation from the Moon's surface is non-existent, would the foreground shadows on the moon (created by the Sun only?) change in angle as the moon travels thru space in a manner that would be easily observed over a very short/immediate period of time? Would the stars also move so drastically in the same instance? Is it possible for the foreground shadows to be exactly the same in both images, but the stars be totally different?
...becomes irrelevant (the answer to your question, by the way, is "No, but who cares - That's noise, not stars").
I think what got others here riled is the perceived train of thought:
"I see dots ---> Dots are stars ---> Stars don't match ---> 'Conspiracy to deceive'"
instead of
"I see dots ---> Dots don't match ---> Dots are not stars"
Which do you think is more reasonable?
If one were to ask me to consider the conspiracy angle (
only considering the issue raised with these two photographs and ignoring the entire rest of the Apollo record), my first thought would be, 'If someone were faking this scene in some way, why would they rearrange a whole lot of 'stars' in the background sky between two consecutive images? That would be silly and - more to the point - unnecessary!'
Hope this helps. Cheers!
