I think there are alternative possibilities as to why the stars are not visible, therefore the contrapositive cannot apply. I say E is the correct answer.

Hi Renae,

Whenever you have a conditional statement, you will always have a corresponding contrapositive statement.

Here we know:
SS --> SV

The contrapositive is:
~SV --> ~SS

And we know that the stars are not visible, so we know we have "~SV".

If you think about the real world, you can probably think of a few different reasons why the stars would not be visible EVEN THOUGH the sun has set. Perhaps it's very cloudy out, etc.

But when you're taking the LSAT, you really have to stick to what's written on the page. In this case, the question stem says "If the amateur astronomer's statements are true..." So you have to assume that the conditional statement SS --> SV is true.