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.
-
@russss That’s a decent handheld shot for 1/4 sec, even with image stabilisation – maybe he was leaning against the window
Still, ISO 51200 is cooking 
@markmccaughrean DSLRs still deliver the goods!
-
@saarmuller The poles are where the aurorae are, broadly speaking, at upper-right & lower-left, so the terminator is more or less north-south, a little biased north, as you’d expect a couple of weeks after the equinox.
@markmccaughrean What I mean is: the bright rim is on the westside, so the end of the day, not the start of dayside. What am I missing?
-
@markmccaughrean DSLRs still deliver the goods!
@russss Which is exactly why I’m intending to upgrade from my shonky old D7000 to a D850 … I mean, I don’t need video, so do I really need to switch to a Z8?
-
@markmccaughrean What I mean is: the bright rim is on the westside, so the end of the day, not the start of dayside. What am I missing?
@saarmuller Oh, in that sense – yes, it's the evening terminator at the end of the day, not the dawn terminator. Good point. I just meant is was the start of the dayside, as in where the dayside "is", not which time of day it was per se.
-
@saarmuller Oh, in that sense – yes, it's the evening terminator at the end of the day, not the dawn terminator. Good point. I just meant is was the start of the dayside, as in where the dayside "is", not which time of day it was per se.
@markmccaughrean That's what I meant by "very confusing"! (Combined with the left-right error, the left WAS the start of day side, the dawn side)
-
@markmccaughrean That's what I meant by "very confusing"! (Combined with the left-right error, the left WAS the start of day side, the dawn side)
-
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.
@markmccaughrean uh... I thought that was South Australia and Tasmania
-
@markmccaughrean uh... I thought that was South Australia and Tasmania
@ranx Am pretty sure that's North Africa, then Spain & Portugal on the left-hand side, with South America at right, & North America at lower-right.
Worth remembering that they were probably still pretty close to Earth when this was taken, so even though it's round, it's quite heavily "distorted" by perspective, as the nadir point is quite a bit closer to them than the limbs.
-
@ranx Am pretty sure that's North Africa, then Spain & Portugal on the left-hand side, with South America at right, & North America at lower-right.
Worth remembering that they were probably still pretty close to Earth when this was taken, so even though it's round, it's quite heavily "distorted" by perspective, as the nadir point is quite a bit closer to them than the limbs.
@markmccaughrean oh right! Now that I flipped the phone I can see the shape of Spain!
-
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.
@markmccaughrean I love the skim of atmosphere, particularly where it's not so bright.
-
@markmccaughrean I love the skim of atmosphere, particularly where it's not so bright.
@Azuaron That thin airglow layer at around 80km is really important in ground-based astronomy.
It's particularly bright in the infrared, dominating the background for near-IR observations, but it's also where the sodium atoms are that are used to create laser guide stars for adaptive optics.
Swings & roundabouts
-
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.
I thought to myself... Duh!
Thanks for the insight. Photo is much more impressive now.
-
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.
-
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.
Is that Venus in the lower right?
-
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.
-
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.
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.
-
@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.
-
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.
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.
-
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.
@markmccaughrean the thing that strikes me must is how thin our atmosphere is - it looks like such a fragile thing for something so important for life on earth.
-
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.
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
