The measurements are real, but “stars behind the Moon” says more than the instruments have established.
A partial recovery
Unaided eyes and ordinary cameras resolve no stars within the Absent Moon. Calibrated narrowband instruments such as the Field Lens can recover some repeatable stellar signatures along the same directions.
The result is partial and never forms a clean background image. “Co-directional” preserves the measurement without assuming the field's distance, topology, transparency, or relationship to the stars.
A measurement with absences
The recovered features repeat only for selected sightlines and spectral bands under calibration. Comparable signatures remain unavailable elsewhere within the apparent face. That pattern could reflect physics, information, instrument response, or a spatial model not yet understood.
A valid record therefore includes the channel, confidence, unavailable bands, pointing direction, and calibration state. Filling the missing regions with plausible stars would create a beautiful image and destroy the evidence.
Why co-directional is the careful word
The instruments establish that a known stellar signature and part of the Moon's apparent envelope occupy the same observed direction. They do not establish which is nearer, whether one lies behind the other, or whether ordinary depth describes their relationship at all.
This matters to the mystery because the observation is both precise and incomplete. The Field Lens lets a player inspect that boundary without turning narrowband astronomy into X-ray vision or a hidden message from the stars.