Ha – I promise I didn't check before fiddling in Celestia, but I see that the EXIF information in the original Artemis JPG says it was taken at 00:27:39, presumably UTC.

And putting that time into Celestia, I get a sub-latitude of -2.8º, a sub-longitude of -13.9º, and a distance of ~10,000km from the surface of Earth.

Which is niche information unless you're a planetary aurora specialist like Jonathan Nichols, who asked 🙂

I tried getting Astrometry.net to solve for the starfield first, but it failed (perhaps not surprisingly given the stupid big planet in the way).

So I went into Celestia, set the time to a reasonable guess for when the Artemis picture might've been taken (I ended up at 00:30 UTC last night), played with the orientation, & bingo – everything lines up.

Not completely perfect, but good enough for government work.

Two planets for the price of one 🙂

This screenshot from Celestia is pretty close to the orientation of the #Artemis II picture taken of Earth's nightside.

The stars in the background line up pretty well, & as @Nina_cried suspected, the bright object to the lower-left of Earth is Venus 👍

And as the original shot suggests, the Sun is behind Earth, slightly to the lower-right of centre, hence the bright dayside limb there.

#Space

As for this one, it's very likely an ichneumon wasp, but being more specific within that huge family is difficult.

There are 3,600 species in Germany alone, so narrowing it down is tough. There's a very similar picture shown for Hercus fontinalis on Wikipedia, but in other pictures, it looks quite different.

Any wasp experts in the house?

#Heidelberg 🏰
#Photography 📷️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️
#BugOfTheDay 🐞
#MacroPhotography 🔬
#InsectsOfMastodon 🪰
#BackGardenEntomology 🪲

And then there's even smaller spider that was dangling at the end of a thread of silk in the breeze before briefly landing on me.

Likely a juvenile from genus Philodroma, the running crab spiders, & perhaps either P. albidus (🇩🇪 Heller Flachstrecker or P. dispar (🇩🇪 Zweifarbflachstrecker).

#Heidelberg 🏰
#Photography 📷️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️
#BugOfTheDay 🐞
#MacroPhotography 🔬
#ArachnidsOfMastodon 🕷️
#BackGardenEntomology 🪲

Harder to photo & ID is this much smaller metallic fly, perched on the edge of a tulip.

From the shape & sheen, it's likely in genus Psilopa (shore or brine flies in English; Uferfliege in 🇩🇪), & one plausible option for the species would be P. nitidula.

That said, we're quite some way from any sea or brine, so maybe it's something else entirely 😬

#Heidelberg 🏰
#Photography 📷️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️
#BugOfTheDay 🐞
#MacroPhotography 🔬
#InsectsOfMastodon 🪰
#BackGardenEntomology 🪲

These are issues that ESA will have to carefully & honestly examine with its Member States in the coming months, as they try to come up with a strategy for human spaceflight that takes into account its deep current dependence on an increasingly unreliable partner.

Do European governments & the European public believe that an independent human spaceflight capability is desirable & affordable?

IMO, it’s perfectly ok if the answer to that is no. But the current model appears very broken.

And of course it’s entirely possible (personally, I think likely) that the wider European public isn’t especially interested in human spaceflight.

At least not in the way that superpowers like the US & China are, where it’s part of soft power propaganda & national myth-making.

After all, there are many other priorities on this planet, arguably more pressing than going to the Moon, such as climate change, security, & resource management, areas where space also plays a critical role though.