Mastodawn

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

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lymenzies 1d ago

@markmccaughrean I didnt fully appreciate this image until your post.

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Mark McCaughrean

@lymenzies To be honest, I don’t think the people at NASA and ESA who posted it appreciated what it showed either, even though the astronauts clearly talked excitedly about trying to capture the moonlit nightside. It was posted without that key detail as if it was “just another dayside” picture of Earth.

I spoke to some journalist friends about it & they hadn’t realised either quite how different it really is 🙂