Why don’t the pictures taken from orbiting spacecraft, on the Moon, etc., show any stars in the background?

C. Claiborne Ray in the New York Times:

Some such pictures do show stars, and NASA offers a Web link to one that does here.

For the most part, however, pictures taken by astronauts are in the nature of snapshots, intended to capture some well-lighted object in the foreground, like Earth or another astronaut.

They employ neither the exposure time nor the film speed that would capture the faint light emitted by stars, which are still distant even from a foothold in space.

More here.