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For the Apollo missions, it has often been said that images of other stars/milky way galaxy could not be captured since they mostly landed in sunlit areas and the reflectance of moon's surface prevented the camera's to adjust for the outer space.
Have any probes to the moon captured such images? Are they available publicly?
Recently, India sent a lander+rover to the moon and they were set to sleep mode due to oncoming lunar night. Was it not the perfect opportunity to capture the starry sky?
I haven't done a thorough survey yet but the first telescope on the Moon was set up by the crew of Apollo 16.
It was an ultraviolet system - observing wavelengths that can't pass through Earth's atmosphere. I believe it was a similar if not same design that was flown later on Skylab:
I can't support the following right now, but it's my understanding that the first orbital space telescope worked in ultraviolet, and most of the early suborbital space telescopes launched from sounding rockets were also ultravilet imagers.
The Chang'e 3 Lunar Lander also had an ultraviolet telescope to look at other galaxies and I think it's likely they took some photos of regions in our own Milky was as well. It also had an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) camera but it's primary purpose was to look at "Earth's plasmasphere".
And of course addressing @GdD's concern
I'm sure you could do this, but as we have multiple space telescopes already what value would this have?
...back in 1972 there was no Hubble space telescope.
Images of milky way galaxy from Moon?
One of the main targets of the Apollo 16 space telescope was the large Magellanic cloud which while not exactly part of the Milky way galaxy per se it's a close enough cousin (gravitationally, spatially) that it's worth mentioning.
Immediate source: File:S-72-39660 Megellanic Cloud far-UV.jpg
This photo is Figure 4-23 of the Apollo 16 Preliminary Science Report (NASA SP-315), which has the following caption: Color-enhanced far-UV photograph of the (Large) Magellanic Cloud. Ultraviolet radiation from specific astronomical targets was recorded on special spectroscopic black-and-white film in the far-UV camera/spectrograph. This photograph of the Magellanic Cloud, the nearest neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way, has been color enhanced to facilitate interpretation. Areas of similar intensity, recorded as a narrow range of gray tones on the black-and-white image of the UV-sensitive film, are reproduced as a color. In this photograph, blue areas indicate UV radiation levels below the threshold of detectability. Several other levels of UV intensity are indicated by different colors, such as red (faint UV), yellow (stronger UV radiation), and orange (most intense UV radiation within this field of view).
Original source: Apollo 16 Preliminary Science Report (NASA SP-315), 1972
From How was the Moon's first telescope used? (Apollo 16)
There certainly are photos of the starry sky from the moon. The best I can find are the shots taken by Apollo 16's ultraviolet camera, which was shielded from the sun and pointed up to keep the ground out of frame. Most of it looks like some variation on this:
Of course it couldn't take any pictures that included the moon's surface, which would have washed out anything else in the shot.
The only moon landers I know that survived at night (where you'd have a decent chance of getting a photo of the milky way) were the USSR's Lunokhod 1 & 2 and China's Chang'e 4, but as far as I can tell they never actually operated in the dark. Power was supplied by solar panels, and while they each had a lump of radioactive material aboard, it was only used to keep the probe warm at night rather than being a true radio-thermal generator (that is, there's no power output).
Some of the photos taken by the Lunokhods show white specks in the black sky, but I believe those are artifacts introduced by the camera and transmission (possibly cosmic rays impacting the panoramic camera?) rather than actual stars as is sometimes reported, as I can find no images that suggest the terrain is not sunlit.
It's not much, but one photo I found of Chang'e 4 (taken by the Yutu-2 rover) does seem to contain stars -- just a couple, barely visible on either side of the antenna mast. They're extremely washed out but there is something there. (Click to get a larger view where they're easier to pick out.) It's possible those are artifacts, reflections, or dust on the lens, though.
There seems to be two separate but related questions being asked, one is a simple yes/no question, are there any images of stars that have been taken from the Moon, and the same question for the Milky Way. It seems that you have received some answers to this question. But your specific choice of the words "starry night sky" and your additional question in the comments, "what does starry sky on Moon look like?" gives me the impression that you are looking for more than this, you seem interested in knowing what the view of the night sky looks like from the Moon compared to from the Earth. That is a great question, but I suspect that any photos that have been taken so far from the Moon will likely not answer this question very well, nor will photos taken with space telescopes in Earth orbit (and beyond). I will go into some details why because there are a lot of factors involved.
Scientific research of the universe is guided by specific objectives, and scientists look for the best ways to obtain information related to those objectives, independent of the experience that it creates for the observer. Not that scientists don’t also have human curiosity, in fact this is what leads many of them into a career in science in the first place. But all telescopes or camera instruments that have been sent into space or to the Moon so far have all been designed for specific types of scientific research.
This is why for example the majority of space telescopes observe in frequencies other than the visual spectrum, because in many cases this provides the greatest amount of data for the specific scientific objective, even though the images created are less relatable from a human experience perspective. The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the smaller number of space telescopes that observe in visible light, which is why the general public has been so enamored with the photos obtained by Hubble. But much of Hubble’s important research has actually been done in the near-infrared frequency, and you likely won’t see many of those images on wall calendars.
Hubble visible light (left) vs infrared (right). Which of these is more likely to show up on a wall calendar or screensaver? (source: STScI)
Landers and rovers on the Moon and Mars have cameras that operate in visible light, but they are designed for surface photography not astrophotography. Not long after the NASA Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021 a photograph was widely circulated which purported to show a photograph of the Milky Way taken by the rover. However this was actually a composite photo done by a VR filmmaker. In the Snopes investigation of the photo they talked to someone at JPL who confirmed this:
the cameras on the rover do not have the capability to capture such a detailed photo of the night sky from Mars. The photo could have been taken from anywhere on Earth.
This may answer your question about whether any photos of the Milky Way have been taken from the Moon, however maybe someone who is looking into this specific part of your question will find some evidence confirming whether or not this is the case.
When it comes to the human experience of viewing the starry sky, the best results come from looking at the stars directly with our eyes rather than viewing photographs, even ones taken from space. I heard one astronaut say that the view of the sky from a high elevation in a remote part of the world in ideal seeing conditions is pretty close to the view of the sky from space. Anyone who has been fortunate enough to view the night sky from a very dark viewing location on a clear night will likely agree that it was a much more profound experience than any photograph can reproduce. This is because human vision is incredibly complicated and robust. And it’s not just about resolution. Instead of images being created on film, CCD or CMOS, the visual image that we see with our eyes is created in the brain in a very complex way, creating an experience which is very different than what can be captured in a photograph. The Cambridge in Colour article Cameras vs. the Human Eye gives a good overview of some of the differences.
Also our visual experience of the starry sky is more one of “panorama” than focus on specific objects, or smaller sections of sky as is more often the case with space telescopes. This is why many of the more relatable photographs of the Milky Way are from ground based cameras, not from Hubble, as spectacular as those are in their own way.
Hubble Milky Way (source: NASA/ESA)
The Rising Milky Way over Uluru (photo by: Eddie Yip, source Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
A regular 35mm camera used on the Moon would likely create a more visually stunning photograph of the lunar sky than any of the scientific instruments that have operated there. The Apollo astronauts had 35mm and 70mm film cameras with them, but they were pretty busy during their EVA’s, they took a lot of photos of the Moon’s surface as well as documenting their activities, but unfortunately they didn’t have any leisure time available for astrophotography. Hopefully this will be an activity that future lunar explorers will engage in when Moon missions are of longer duration. Those photos will hopefully provide a better answer to your question "what does starry sky on Moon look like?" than the past and current instruments are capable of.
Although even then, the photographs that they produce will likely not be nearly as impressive as what you can experience yourself by making a trek to a dark sky location on a clear winter night.
