You'll likely catch this image a million times in your various feeds: Earth as seen by Reid Wiseman from Artemis II en-route to the Moon.

My first thought? That's *really* noisy 🧐

But then I realised – it's the *nightside* of Earth, illuminated by the almost full Moon, not the Sun 🌕

The bright limb at lower-right is where the dayside starts, & the fact that you can see aurorae, airglow, & cities in Europe, Africa, & S & N America also gives the game away.

Cool.

#Photography #Artemis

@markmccaughrean

Is that Venus in the lower right?

@Nina_cried Good question – it could be. I've just sent the image to Astrometry.net to see if it can identify the star field. Might need to crop it though, given that big planet thing in the middle.

@Nina_cried You were right 🙂

Astrometry.net failed me, but I went into Celestia, set a reasonable time for when that picture might've been taken, played around with the orientation a bit, & bingo – everything lines up.

Nicely done – thanks for the suggestion.