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Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/
- Fairburn 7mo agoNothing spectacular about it. Except for the obvious degradation of our planet, there isnt anything special about it. Its just our home.
- hmaxwell 7mo agowait why is it round?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- damnitbuilds 7mo agoAnyone find the full res version of this ? Nasa images page is useless. Government work.
- matteason 7mo agoThey're here: https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/journey-to-the-moon/ https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/journey-to-the-moon/ Direct link to this image: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e000192.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e00019...
- mbauman 7mo agoThat version is ~~brightened significantly~~ (edit) a longer exposure; I like the darker one better. https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e000193/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e000193/
- damnitbuilds 7mo agoJpeg.
- Jordan-117 7mo ago"I cannot immediately find a photo on a website, therefore I will denigrate the agency that sent people into OUTER SPACE to make these incredible images possible."
- damnitbuilds 7mo agoNASA spends $4 billion PER ARTEMIS FLIGHT to throw reusable engines into the sea so people with influential representatives get jobs. It is pork barrel politics at its very worse. NASA has a lot to be proud of. but not Artemis. And not their Artemis website.
- sgt 7mo agoI don't understand why media, such as BBC, keep uploading heavily compressed versions of photos that could be beautiful. The original has grain, sure but that's not a problem. The BBC version is horrific. Are they trying to save on bandwidth in 2026?
- pndy 7mo agoIf the content loads fast, more views are given and more data is collected. My uBo caught 6 elements, Privacy Possum got referer headers blocked from 28 sources
- BHSPitMonkey 7mo agoIt's highly reasonable for them to limit image size/quality to whatever looks fine to 98% of their readers. They store and serve an absolute ton of ever-changing content to browsers/apps; The very small (and likely revenue-negative) contingent of highly motivated people can find the originals if the images are especially noteworthy like these.
- sandworm101 7mo agoCome on flat-earthers. I know you are out there. Lets hear your crazy rant about how this is a fisheye lens on a weather balloon or a webcam atop the eiffel tower. Why can't we see the poles? And is that an ice wall on poking up in the lower-right quadrant of the disk?
- layer8 7mo agoDon’t you see the reflection of the studio lighting in the middle?
- geldedus 7mo agoof course they are sore losers
- itsalwaysthem 7mo agoFlat Earth is a distraction or a way to ridicule any counter-narrative to anything scientific. When a cosmologist says that a planet nobody can see exists and is made of x% helium and is y light years away etc etc with absolute certainty despite nobody being able to go there and witness any of it (look how wrong they were about Pluto’s appearance), then you can always just say “what are you a Flat Earther” and easily discredit any doubt I have in these extraordinary claims with underwhelming evidence. Any idea you want the public to oppose, you can create and market an adjacent thing, like Trump. You can throw all the ideas you want to oppose in the Trump bucket and if anyone supports it it’s probably because they’re a Trump supporter right? See you’re very very easily programmed, like clockwork.
- kube-system 7mo ago> a planet nobody can see exists and is made of x% helium and is y light years away etc etc Yeah, because this is high-school curriculum. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/resources/lesson-plan/using-light-to-study-planets/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/resources/lesson-plan/using-lig... > with absolute certainty It is taught that the scientific method provides evidence, not certainty, in middle school science curriculum.
- MiscIdeaMaker99 7mo agoWhat a gorgeous sight to behold!
- Sharlin 7mo agoI was confused when I first saw this photo, as I don't think I've ever before seen a nightside, moonlit Earth, exposed so that it looks like the dayside at a first glance. I wonder how many casual viewers actually realize it's the night side. A nice demonstration of how moonlight is pretty much exactly like sunlight, just much much dimmer. In particular it has the same color, even though moonlight is often thought of as bluish and sunlight as yellowish!
- layer8 7mo agoIt explains why the image is so grainy. At first I was confused what that stripe to the left and the bottom was. But it’s just the window edge, and the noise isn’t stars.
- MarkusQ 7mo agoWell one of them is obviously Venus. How did you determine the others weren't stars?
- layer8 7mo agoI’m talking about the grainy noise over all the black parts (actually over the Earth disk as well), including beyond the window edge. The window edge itself looks like a denser and brighter stripe of stars. Zoom into this higher-resolution version: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e000192.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e00019...
- Sharlin 7mo agoYep, that's definitely noise.
- Sharlin 7mo ago(To be clear, the bright dots are stars [except the brightest one, in the lower right, is Venus I think], which makes this photo also a great demonstration that of course you can capture stars in space, you just have to expose properly!)
- longislandguido 7mo ago> The image, titled Hello, World A new hello.jpg?
- delichon 7mo agoI object to being included in this image without a model release and demand that pixel be removed.
- brongondwana 7mo agoTell the world you're REALLY fat without telling the world ...
- palata 7mo ago"Your mom is so fat she would take a whole pixel on that image"?
- delecti 7mo agoYour comment history suggests you're in the US, so you should be pleased to learn that you weren't included. The visible landmass is northern Africa, with a smidge of the Iberian Peninsula visible.
- layer8 7mo agoSouth America is visible on the right, and it looks to me like part of North America might also be pictured close to the horizon. Higher-resolution image: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e000192.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e00019...
- delecti 7mo agoOh, good point. I missed South America under the cloud cover. I guess the Eastern edge of the US would indeed be visible as a highly distorted smudge on the edge of the visible surface. For a view of roughly the same half of Earth, but with less clouds, if you rotate the image clockwise by 150 degrees you get roughly this viewpoint of the earth: https://earth.google.com/web/@3.63731074,-23.1618975,-2690.78157304a,17056313.54043245d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBOgMKATBCAggASg0I____________ARAA https://earth.google.com/web/@3.63731074,-23.1618975,-2690.7...
- rvnx 7mo agoHow come the pictures have such bad quality ? Is it a bandwidth issue ? Or there are really constraints that are not so obvious ? Because fundamentally it is a large object illuminated by sunlight.
- Sharlin 7mo agoIt's the night-side Earth, taken at a high ISO value to keep shutter speed fast to prevent blur.
- rvnx 7mo agoOk thank you, makes more sense, I thought it was the day-side
- Sharlin 7mo agoYes, I was also confused when I first saw it – how could the aurora be visible?! The bright sliver of atmosphere in the lower right is, of course, backlit by the sun which is itself eclipsed by Earth. It's the near-full moon that provides most of the illumination here. Besides both auroral rings you can also see airglow, city lights, and lightning flashes, it's a marvellous photo.
- sgt 7mo agoNo, it's BBC's compression of that image. Look at the original: https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/ It's grainy, but the detail is terrific.
- consumer451 7mo ago@dang, mods: maybe this should be the post's link. The image quality is much higher.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- yieldcrv 7mo agoI love how all the public critique about not being able to see stars in nasa photos has resulted in better dynamic range photography and composition just the lowest hanging fruit that had been a second class citizen to the marvel of having an extraterrestrial angle to begin with
- _adq2 7mo ago[flagged]
- mememememememo 7mo agoIt sure does. But this trip is real. As was Apollo.
- sdfjkhdfjkdhs 7mo agoNope.
- seydor 7mo agowhats different between this and all the other pics of earth from various space devices
- senko 7mo agoThis is the night side.
- Strom 7mo agoTaken by a different camera, from a different location, at a different time.
- layer8 7mo agoIt’s taken by a human on the way to the moon.
- hydrogen7800 7mo agoThat's enough for me. There was also much hype about a new blue marble picture, but I'm ok with that.
- Rebelgecko 7mo agoI saw someone point out on reddit that this probably the first digital picture of the whole earth (well, 1 side of it) taken by a person Apollo used film and it's been a long time since anyone has gone past LEO
- Forge36 7mo agoThere something amazing about that. Thanks for pointing it out!
- WalterBright 7mo agoHaven't any of the space probes taken such pictures as they left to wander through the solar system?
- 7mo ago
- crimshawz 7mo ago[flagged]
- consumer451 7mo agoMan, this is truly awesome. I wonder if NASA's Don Pettit, u/astro_pettit [0] consults on all missions going forward. He really should. He is "our people," as far as hacking astrophotography from space. [1] [0] https://old.reddit.com/user/astro_pettit https://old.reddit.com/user/astro_pettit [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42701645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42701645
- evilelectron 7mo agoHello again dot. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
- hannesfur 7mo agoLooking at the EXIF (with exiftool) for the image uploaded by NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e000192.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/art002e00019...), apparently this was taken by a Nikon D5 with an AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED and developed with Lightroom. It also seems like very little was done in Lightroom. Amazing... I dumped the whole EXIF here: https://gist.github.com/umgefahren/a6f555e6588a98adb74eed79d734012c https://gist.github.com/umgefahren/a6f555e6588a98adb74eed79d...
- consumer451 7mo agoThanks! This was my first question.
- pants2 7mo agoWhile the D5 is a great camera it's ~10 years old. Wonder why they didn't go for the Z9 which is its modern mirrorless equivalent.
- reactordev 7mo agoGovernment budgets man…
- zimpenfish 7mo ago> Wonder why they didn't go for the Z9 which is its modern mirrorless equivalent. From [0], "The D5 was chosen for its radiation resistance, extreme ISO range (up to 3,280,000), and proven reliability in space." ( [0] https://www.photoworkout.com/artemis-ii-nikon-d5-moon/ https://www.photoworkout.com/artemis-ii-nikon-d5-moon/
- loloquwowndueo 7mo agoZero point in measuring camera sizes (or other sizes haha) when JWST is floating there.
- jimbosis 7mo ago"The Nikon D5 remains the camera of choice for the Artemis II mission and will be assigned primary photographic duties. It is a proven, highly-tested camera that the Artemis II team knows will excel in the high-radiation environment of space. However, as Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman explained ahead of yesterday’s launch, he successfully fought to have a single Nikon Z9 added to Artemis II’s manifest." https://petapixel.com/2026/04/02/a-nikon-z9-made-it-aboard-the-artemis-ii-moon-mission-at-the-last-minute/ https://petapixel.com/2026/04/02/a-nikon-z9-made-it-aboard-t... There are more interesting details in the PetaPixel article, such as: "'That’s the camera that they’ll be using, the crew will be using on Artemis III plus, so we were fighting really hard to get that on the vehicle to test out in a high-radiation environment in deep space,' Wiseman said." H/t to "SiliconEagle73" who linked to that PetaPixel article in the thread linked below. https://old.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/1sbfevm/new_high_resolution_image_of_the_earth_taken_by/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/1sbfevm/new_high_reso...
- ge96 7mo agoWhy 'spectacular' the quotes I'm sad not alive at a time like Cowboy Bebop oh well, this is a great pic, overview effect
- layer8 7mo agoThey are quoting NASA.
- juleiie 7mo ago[unexplained loss of data]
- ge96 7mo agoIt is funny if you think about it, imagine you arrive on a planet and there is nothing there, now what. Not saying it is not worth doing but it's like other aspects of life, about the journey. But yeah I think we are lucky to have this ability/get outside of our sandbox. Be aware of the bigger picture.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- alberto467 7mo ago[flagged]
- rpns 7mo agoIf they're someone else's words, they'll put them in quotation marks. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
- Angostura 7mo agoNot really > Artemis II crew take 'spectacular' image of Earth It was described by someone else as spectacular - in this case NASA > Artemis II crew take spectacular image of Earth We the BBC certify that this image is officially spectacular Not hugely important in this context. By more import, when the sentence is something like X 'commits warcrimes' against Y
- themarogee 7mo ago[dead]
- nout 7mo agoIt took me a while to orient myself on that picture, until I realized where Spain is... :)
- sensanaty 7mo agoIt really is crazy when you think about it, we're capable of taking a picture of the planet we live on from outer space. We take it for granted, that we know what it all looks like. I often find myself wondering how ancient peoples before us would react to something like this
- rapnie 7mo agoEspecially if they knew the sad state of the world whence the rocket was fired from, almost as a distraction of the decay of modern society mankind faces because of their fancy tech and the madmen it enables. I used to be fan of all space tech related stuff, but to me it has lost a lot of its shine. The people of old may say "hey, it is just like Easter island, except their monuments are dedicated to the God of Tech".
- MrGilbert 7mo agoI love the fact that you can see the aurora at both poles!
- sva_ 7mo agoI wish I could see a pic from today with the aurora. I was surprised to see the aurora in northern Europe a couple hours ago, it is very active right now.
- MrGilbert 7mo agoYeah, it is - unfortunately, it is rather cloudy in my area at the moment. Luckily, the weather was better during the 19./20. January event, which I'll carry forever in my heart.
- Rury 7mo agoI like the non brightened version, where you can clearly see the light coming from cities. How cool would it be if we saw similar on another planet...
- pndy 7mo agoI may be mistaken but there's even atmosphere visible - that tiny translucent band on the darker photo
- nandomrumber 7mo agoWild. That tiny translucent band… The total mass of Earth’s atmosphere is about 5.5 quadrillion tons https://www.britannica.com/story/how-much-does-earths-atmosphere-weigh https://www.britannica.com/story/how-much-does-earths-atmosp...
- TimByte 7mo agoIt almost looks like the Earth has a subtle glow around it
- brcmthrowaway 7mo agoDoes there exist a camera that can zoom into a single person from this distance?
- underlipton 7mo agoCan't decide if this is "MOEAGARE ARUCHIMISU" moment or a "Transcending Time" moment.
- susam 7mo agoMuch higher quality images are available on the NASA Image Library: Dark Side of the Earth: https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e000193/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e000193/ Hello World: https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/ On images-assets.nasa.gov, we can find the 5567x3712 resolution versions of these pictures: Dark Side of the Earth: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e000193/art002e000193~orig.jpg https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e000193/art002e00... Hello World: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e000192/art002e000192~orig.jpg https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e000192/art002e00...
- nektro 7mo agotruly stunning picture
- prism56 7mo agoCan I see the thin band of atmosphere?
- nasretdinov 7mo agoYeah I'm pretty sure that's atmosphere since it does scatter light slightly
- sph 7mo agoIt really just is a blue marble floating in nothingness.
- suzzer99 7mo agoWhere's Antarctica?
- saint_yossarian 7mo agoJust behind the horizon somewhere on the top right, or maybe some of those clouds are already it. You can see for yourself in Google Maps if you enable the globe view, unfortunately it seems I can't share a direct link.
- mkoryak 7mo agoThis is exactly what I need for printing as 14x10 4x6 photos stitched together!
- eager_learner 7mo agothis ought to put flat-earthers completely down. :)
- getnormality 7mo agoIf you're confused what you're looking at, turn it upside down.
- abdusco 7mo agoWest Africa & Gibraltar strait
- computomatic 7mo agoFrom the article: > The Earth appears upside down Which I find to be a rather interesting take.
- thumbsup-_- 7mo agoImagine that all our joys, problems and attachments are within that blue sphere
- bilsbie 7mo agoCan we confirm the cloud patterns match weather data from the same time? Might be a good way to verify.
- darknavi 7mo agoVerify what?
- bilsbie 7mo agoThe shapes match.
- pndy 7mo agoYou think this is some kind of hoax?
- bilsbie 7mo agoNo but I’d like an answer for the people that claim that.
- dfedbeef 7mo agoJust don't talk to them
- sdfjkhdfjkdhs 7mo ago[flagged]
- GMoromisato 7mo agoI agree with "don't talk to those people". If they don't believe this picture, why would they believe a weather satellite picture?
- greentea23 7mo agoNo, that part of NASA was defunded.
- whycombinetor 7mo ago"It is the first time since 1972 that humans have travelled outside of the Earth's orbit." But they're not tho (Earth's gravitational dominance extends 4x the distance to the moon)
- rationalist 7mo agoTechnically correct, the best kind of correct. After all, the moon is in Earth's orbit.
- mr_toad 7mo agoOne would hope they’re still in Earth’s orbit - if they’ve achieved escape velocity they’re not coming back.
- exegete 7mo agoSo if we’re being technical I think they did achieve escape velocity? But the moon’s gravity and some timed burns will slingshot them back.
- gwd 7mo agoBut one could imagine, as a failsafe, arranging things so that Integrity was in fact still in orbit around the Earth, as a sort of "backup" in the event that they somehow missed the moon's slingshot effect.
- xyzsparetimexyz 7mo agoTheyre travelling to a region of space where the moons gravity is more important than the earths though. I think that counts
- pdonis 7mo ago> It is the first time since 1972 that humans have travelled outside of the Earth's orbit. They mean outside of low Earth orbit (which basically means further away than the ISS). The phrasing is not ideal. > Earth's gravitational dominance extends 4x the distance to the moon "Earth's gravitational dominance" is not a single thing; it depends on what kind of "dominance" you're talking about. For example, even though the Moon is usually described as being in orbit about the Earth, its orbit is always concave towards the Sun. In other words, its net gravitational acceleration is always towards the Sun--even when the Earth is on the other side of it from the Sun. So by this criterion it's not in orbit about the Earth, it's in orbit about the Sun, doing a complicated do-si-do with the Earth, also in orbit about the Sun. I'm not sure what definition of "dominance" you're using that extends the Earth's "dominance" to 4 times the distance of the Moon.
- dzonga 7mo agothe pale blue dot. if anything in life gives me pleasure is I have experienced life, with its highs and downs on this little speck.
- thenthenthen 7mo agoIf you are interested in taking similar images, there are several satellites transmitting ‘full disk’ images like this, instead of a camera you need a dish or yagi a sdr and lna. Example satellites are Himawari 8, GOES 18, Fengyun 2H.
- mariusor 7mo agoAnd they can be found online pretty easily: https://himawari8.nict.go.jp/ https://himawari8.nict.go.jp/. I remember there's some tools to use the images as desktop backgrounds: https://github.com/boramalper/himawaripy https://github.com/boramalper/himawaripy
- qingcharles 7mo agoI remember watching grainy B+W ones in the 80s via a dish. It might have been a slow scan signal back then? It blew my mind watching the Earth live as a disk, seeing the weather in realtime.
- thenthenthen 7mo agoThe old NOAA APT (automatic picture transmission) maybe? Sadly turned off in August 2025. Very easy to receive and indeed sounded like sstv bleeps!
- rav3ndust 7mo agoto quote the old meme: > hey, i'm in a picture with all my friends!
- nntwozz 7mo agoFor anyone not understanding the high ISO please have a look at this recent video by minutephysics. Do you understand ISO? It took me 21 years... https://youtu.be/ZWSvHBG7X0w https://youtu.be/ZWSvHBG7X0w This video explains how ISO is very different to what most people imagine, and how you can use this knowledge to take less noisy photos.
- tacostakohashi 7mo agoThere's something a bit weird having these digital photos and crisp digital audio and video of the astronauts, and seeing pictures of mission control with flat screens after having grown up on grainy analogue video, crackly audio with lots of beeps, and mission control being choc full of CRTs being watch by men in short sleeve shirts with black ties and cigarettes.
- radium3d 7mo agoDid they mount my Canon 7D to the outside? :D reminds me of the familiar grain haha
- erelong 7mo agoLiterally a wasteful distraction from more important things
- 1zael 7mo agoHow are people still flat-earthers after stuff like this
- heresie-dabord 7mo agoBecause without the network effect of adequate education, scientific understanding doesn't scale. What does scale, unfortunately, is arrant nonsense.
- rootusrootus 7mo agoMaybe I'm just a dumb optimist, but I've always assumed that the flat earthers started out as an enteraining debate club intentionally trying to prove something impossible just for the challenge, which got overtaken by a tiny number of vocal idiots. I have heard they largely have moved on to Qanon, which tracks.
- erulabs 7mo agoThe initial modern flat earth movement was absolutely trolling, no doubt about it. But as the myth grew, enough grifters and actual idiots glomed onto the idea that it became what it originally mocked. Poe's law and all that. Similar to the "I fell in love with an AI!" folks, it's largely undercover salesmen hawking their goods to the gullible.
- Bloating 7mo ago...sounds like the No-Kings people
- hydrogen7800 7mo agoYeah, certainly not the kings cult.
- rootusrootus 7mo agoIf I have to choose between the people protesting authoritarianism and those embracing it, I’ll take the former.
- 7mo ago
- CommenterPerson 7mo agoWhy didn't NASA or the news agencies rotate the image so North is up? and slightly to the right. That would make Africa instantly recognizable as that's how maps are imprinted in our brains. There is no "up" in space, so that wouldn't be editing the image I feel. The camera just happened to be oriented "upside down".
- getnormality 7mo agoI was thinking the same thing, but then I decided to embrace the frustration of the image. It's reminding us that the pictures we have in our heads are kind of fragile. They don't prepare us for a live encounter with Earth from some random angle in space.
- thsbrown 7mo agoThis is kind of profound.
- spopejoy 7mo agoI asked a different question in my mind, who says it "appears to us as upside down"? I would think if you lived in Patagonia, the south pole is "up".
- s4i 7mo agoI personally prefer to view it in the same orientation the photographer saw it in their viewfinder. Makes me feel more like I’m inside the vessle looking at the planet.
- mr_toad 7mo agoIf you live in the southern hemisphere most pictures of the Moon that you see online look upside down compared to ones that you take yourself.
- steve-atx-7600 7mo agoTo paraphrase Carl Sagan: insignificant plant in an insignificant galaxy and there’s a good chance we’ll annihilate ourselves.
- evolve2k 7mo agoComparing the final two images of taken of earth in 1972 and 2026 respectively; does the 2026 (left) image look murkier and less crisp to anyone else? Surely our camera gear is exponentially better now? Is the reason for the new image being ‘murkier’ due to light, pollution or something else?
- mccraveiro 7mo ago1972 -> taken during daytime 2026 -> taken during nightime
- dsego 7mo ago> Surely our camera gear is exponentially better now They are better, but not exponentially. You can't beat physics, film cameras can still compete in terms of dynamic range and resolution, the optical elements haven't changed that much. The 1972 photo was taken on medium format film, which is twice the size of the sensor area in the modern one, which means more photons and less noise. The recent image was take at a really high ISO, which adds to the noisiness.
- firefoxd 7mo agoFun question: What time was this taken? The exif includes time, but not time zone. They are not quite at the moon, and Lunar Time is under active development but not official. Also clocks tick slower under the moon's weaker gravity. (Or is it faster?) Anyway, what time was this taken?
- pdonis 7mo agoI think the clocks on board Orion are set to Houston time, which would be 5 hours behind UTC (because of Daylight Saving). But I'm not sure. I would expect the EXIF time to be in whatever time zone the spacecraft's clocks are set to. > clocks tick slower under the moon's weaker gravity. (Or is it faster?) Compared to clocks at rest on Earth, clocks on board Orion right now are ticking faster, because it's at a high enough altitude above the Earth that the faster ticking due to higher altitude outweighs the slower ticking due to speed relative to the Earth. That will be true for most of the mission. For clocks in orbit about the Earth, the "breakeven point" where the altitude effect and the speed effect cancel out and the clock ticks at the same rate as an Earth clock is at, IIRC, about 1.5 Earth radii. So clocks on the ISS, for example, tick slower than Earth clocks; but clocks on the GPS satellites (orbiting at 4.2 Earth radii) tick faster (and there is an adjustment made for this on each satellite so that the time signals they send out match Earth clock rates). For a spacecraft moving at escape velocity, which is going to be roughly true for Orion all the way until splashdown, I think the "breakeven point" is higher, at a little over 2 Earth radii. Orion will reach that point on the way back a few hours before splashdown, I think. The Moon's gravity well is too shallow to make an appreciable difference in any of these calculations. I should emphasize that all these tick rate effects are tiny, on the order of one part in a billion to one part in a hundred billion. Even when you add up the difference over the entire mission, it's still only on the order of hundreds of microseconds (i.e., the astronauts end up aging a few hundred microseconds more than people who stayed on Earth).
- swores 7mo ago> So clocks on the ISS, for example, tick slower than Earth clocks; but clocks on the GPS satellites (orbiting at 4.2 Earth radii) tick faster (and there is an adjustment made for this on each satellite so that the time signals they send out match Earth clock rates) I'm curious, and hope you or somebody else might be able to answer this: is it a single adjustment for each thing, where they just set it to always adjust by X ratio, or does it vary (enough to matter) as it orbits, such that the adjustment needs to be constantly varying slightly?
- Rodmine 7mo agoOnce video models get better, hope we can also see some videos.
- bytesandbits 7mo agohere the original NASA photos at high resolution without unnecessary ads. https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/journey-to-the-moon/ https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/journey-to-the-moon/
- joebig 7mo agohttps://artemis-tracker.netlify.app/ https://artemis-tracker.netlify.app/
- joebig 7mo agohttps://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/
- Uptrenda 7mo agoThat picture of the "dark" Earth is most fascinating because everyone has seen a million images of Earth before, but how many have seen it in this view. The image by itself says a little about the Earths place in the planetary system.
- mrcwinn 7mo agoA beautiful reminder of what's possible with photography when you're using more than a comparatively crappy iPhone Pro Max camera. (Oh and taking the shot from Outer Space.)
- Helmut10001 7mo agoThe comparison pictures look like there is more dust in the air today. They don't explain this effect, so I assume it is related to time of day the photo was taken, or camera settings, not actual dust accumulation compared to 1972. However, the direct comparison gives the impression they want people to interpret like the air is getting dirtier?
- Arpitbhalla 7mo agojust curious to know why is there no dark on opposite side if sun is another side?
- picafrost 7mo agoThis is all we've got. We need to do a better job of preserving it.
- Xiol 7mo agoUnfortunately that would affect shareholder value.
- hermannj314 7mo agoOne of the objectives of the Artemis missions is to prepare for Mars travel, none of the objectives of Artemis are to view Earth as the only planet we have nor to preserve it.
- Bloating 7mo agoYou must be a capitalist pig with trump delusion, lol! This point of artemis is to prove the earth is flat. the picture proves it! I downvote thee!
- hermannj314 7mo agoProving the Earth is flat is not one of the stated goals of the Artemis program which is to establish a permanent base on the moon to prepare for deep space exploration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
- throwaway2037 7mo ago> We need to do a better job of preserving it. I reject this sentiment. Ask anyone that you know who lived through the 1960s in a rich country. Their experience is nearly all the same: The air quality and environmental pollution was appalling. When my mother lived in Manhattan (New York City) in the 1960s, she would return home from work, and wipe her face with a cloth. The cloth had black streaks from all the pollution. Today, it is a different world in rich countries. They have cleaned up. Finally: Yes, global warming is real, but the threat is different. I predict that we will far exceed the average increase in global average temperature, but we will survive. Yes, we will survive, but with some "scars".
- deepsun 7mo agoWhere are the turtles?
- chistev 7mo agoThis picture wasn't taken from far away, but I thought about that quote from Carl Sagan - Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. https://www.rxjourney.net/30-things-i-know https://www.rxjourney.net/30-things-i-know
- trimethylpurine 7mo ago>The burn took the Orion spacecraft out of Earth orbit... No it didn't. That would be catastrophic and likely fatal. They are going to the Moon, which is also in Earth orbit.
- 14 7mo agoI often think about what an amazing time it is to be alive and how amazing all the tech we have at our fingertips is. But I am also incredibly saddened by the fact that I was probably born just shy of routine space travel. I can not even imagine how amazing it would be to look down on earth and see it in its entirety. Hopefully my kids or my grandkids will be able to achieve my dream and do exactly that.
- 0x1ceb00da 7mo agoIf you had routine space travel, you would be upset that you can't time travel.
- account42 7mo agoWell first he'd be sad about only being able to travel the solar system because everything else is so far away.
- 14 7mo agoLate reply but about the above comment well there is no need for space travel to be sad not having time travel. I am not actually sad I don't have time travel but have definitely day dreamed many times about how incredible it would be to have such a power. Not to change the past but to just go back and witness events. But I don't believe that would ever be possible so like to think about it but not saddened about it. As for being sad about not leaving the solar system well it's about the same as time travel. I have already accepted the fact that humans will likely never get very far from earth without some discovery that goes against everything we know like a way to bend space or travel many times faster then the speed of light. I just want to float in space and look back on earth and feel the profound sense others who have done so describe. Cheers
- Vincsenzo 7mo agoWhat is that bright star like object on the bottom right? Is it Venus? I’m guessing it’s Venus because it’s much brighter than a star would be.
- qingcharles 7mo agoNASA confirmed it is Venus, yeah.
- polskibus 7mo agoWhy is the old image so much more blue? Did pollution increase cause this change in color over time?
- alex_duf 7mo agoOne was taken during daylight on film, which needs to be processed and scanned, the other one was taken at high ISO during night time on a digital camera. So much interpretation is done on colour on each step of the way that it's not surprising the colours are looking different.
- The_Goonies1985 7mo ago[dead]
- isoprophlex 7mo agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/3DS/comments/1sakb3v/artemis_ii_launch_shot_on_3ds/ https://www.reddit.com/r/3DS/comments/1sakb3v/artemis_ii_lau... The launch, shot on a Nintendo 3DS. For those with a gen z-like retro tech streak.
- generj 7mo agoWhat a mad idea. The aesthetic ended up pretty cool but I can’t imagine the thought process that lead to capturing the launch on a 3DS.
- MarsIronPI 7mo agoIt sounds like something 10yo me would have done. I love it.
- anticrymactic 7mo agoUnsurprisingly this is also today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260404.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260404.html
- tom-blk 7mo agoVery cool
- pluc 7mo agoWhy is spectacular in quotations? I keep seeing this in headlines, is it because they're quoting a single word?
- not_a_bot_4sho 7mo agoYes
- tantalor 7mo agoIt's lazy "editorializing"
- jameshart 7mo agoQuite the opposite.
- jameshart 7mo agoIt’s a BBC journalistic standards thing; the BBC doesn’t want to express an opinion about the image, they are relaying that as a quote from someone about the image. The word “spectacular” is attributed to NASA in the article.
- blondie9x 7mo ago[dead]
- tim333 7mo agoI was trying to figure the country - I think north Africa upside down and Spain https://earth.google.com/web/@3.88879526,-24.75819914,62.06836195a,13406249.14574146d,35y,146.7641088h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBOgMKATBCAggASg0I____________ARAA?authuser=0 https://earth.google.com/web/@3.88879526,-24.75819914,62.068...
- Defletter 7mo agoIt's one of those stark reminders that there's no such thing as up or down in space, and something that disabuses me of the notion that I can truly comprehend "the enemy gate is down".
- fanatic2pope 7mo agoVery cool. Along the same lines the EPIC::DSCOVR mission has been taking photos of the earth since, I believe, around 2015. https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/
- pclowes 7mo agoPale Blue Dot subtly shaped my perception of Earth. We are not standing on earth looking up at the stars. We are being held by earth as we look down into an infinite abyss of death. Everything we are depends on that fragile bubble holding us.
- djfobbz 7mo agoBut why not film everything like skydivers do in 8K 120fps from every angle and live stream it? After all, it is 2026...and near-Earth missions like the Moon can now support hundreds of Mbps (even approaching Gbps with laser communication). In the age of live streaming, wasn't this taken into account? All we got is a choppy 480p video feed, if that.
- diyseguy 7mo agoGotta love the sarcastic quotes
- skyskys 7mo agoWOW!!!!
- egeozcan 7mo agoDear some very-rich person, please send a selfie-camera to the space! Yes, all that effort so we can keep looking at ourselves on a planet scale.
- MengerSponge 7mo agoGood news! We already have that! If you pay taxes to the US that's one of the thing you've helped pay for: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/imagery/satellite-maps https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/imagery/satellite-maps For reasons that are unexplainable if you're the NYTimes, polluting industries have been trying to kill these missions for decades.
- egeozcan 7mo agoI'm not a US resident but I'm immensely disappointed in myself because I didn't know this existed. I guess the rich person who was just planning to respond to my request needs to find another thing to spend their money on :)
- TimByte 7mo agoIt sounds trivial, but perspective shots like this are part of why public support for space programs exists at all
- TimByte 7mo agoIt's kind of wild how every generation gets its own "Blue Marble" moment. Technically we've seen Earth from space a million times by now, but every new human perspective still hits differently
- basicallyyeah 7mo ago1D smol brains: "Fckin flat erthers lolll" 2D midbrains: "It's Africa and Spain, I can tell you because of my superior knowledge of geography! Are you impressed yet" 3D minds of men: "Godspeed you brave soldiers" 4D Galaxy brains: "Israel did 911, all this space shit is a front for making bombs and rockets, nobody knows where we came from or what happens when we die"
- skc 7mo agoIt's humbling to see this image. I can't even begin to imagine what it must feel like to see this from the perspective of those astronauts.
- dritzps 7mo ago[dead]
- darkoob12 7mo agoShouldn't we see satellites around earth? Like in Wall-E :)
- 6thbit 7mo agoIs there an annotated picture mapping city “light dots” to city names?