I know that Elenin was blocked out from that pic.

Originally posted by wasco2
Probably for the same reason there are no stars in many of the Apollo photos. The correct exposure for the earth and the moon (or the astrounauts and the moon) rendered the stars too dim to show up. It's also a very blurry low res photo and stars are point sources of light.

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'ZACTLY!
Because you are not looking out the spacecraft window. You are seeing a representation of the "limitations" of the camera sensor/lense/outout ( print/screen) system. The human eye adapts to varying levels of light of roughly over 9 "stops"depending on what you want to focus on.

A camera is technically limited to a "sliding scale" of 5 or 6 "stops" of dynamic range from black to pure white". If I choose to set the exposure of those available 5 "stops" to render detail in the brightest details (the highlights): Dimmer light will not register. If I instead choose to set the exposure to" open up the shadows" and add ( exposure) detail to the dark areas the highlights are "blown"( over exposed and go pure white).

If I expose for the reflected sunlight from the earth and moon (a "sunny16" daylight exposure on earth) starlight will not be intense enough to showup.
Because light is omnidirectional(travels like an expanding sphere) : Light intensity decreases by a square of the distance ( twice the distance from the source = 1/quarter the intensity) so planets farther away don't have the same reflected intensity.

We are 93 million miles from the Sun. Is this pic from 6 billion or 6 million miles away?

oops I thought it was the sun and the earth