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I 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 fi
by Sharlin 7mo ago
I 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!)
- MarkusQ 7mo agoHow do you know that they're stars? I believe they probably are stars as well (by visual comparison with a star chart, suitably rotated), but I've found no source for either claim. I did find multiple sources, including TFA, for the brightest being Venus.
- MarkusQ 7mo agoJust answered my own question to my satisfaction; they are stars. The same specs, which match star charts, show up in two images taken a few moments apart at different exposures (links were given down-thread).
- dylan604 7mo agoWho said you can't capture stars in space? What do you think the purpose of Hubble, JWST, etc are? There's also plenty of imagery taken from ISS that clearly show stars. I've definitely seen Orion in some of that imagery and it put a different perspective on the size of the constellations when seen from that angle.
- smallerize 7mo agoPhotos from the moon landings don't have stars in them, because they are exposed for full daylight on the moon.
- xp84 7mo ago
- madaxe_again 7mo agoIt’s a remarkable photo. You can see the aurora Australis at the top right of the image (it’s upside down, if there is such a thing - that’s the straits of Gibraltar at the lower left, and the Sahara above it - and the skein of atmosphere wrapping the entire planet. Those look like noctilucent clouds in the north, or possibly more aurora.
- Sharlin 7mo agoIt really is gorgeous. You can see both auroral rings, then there's airglow, and city lights around Gibraltar and on the South American coast, and lightning flashes in the storm clouds over the tropics.
- dylan604 7mo agoI've done several shoots lit only by the full moon. Doing long exposure, the images are as you stated not much different than an image taken during the day, except for looking at the sky and seeing stars. I've also done video shoots with the newer mirrorless cameras and fast lenses shooting wide open again lit with nothing but the full moon. It again looks daylight on the image. As a bit of BTS, I recorded a video of the screen on the camera showing what it was seeing, and then pulled away and reframed to show essentially the same shot as the camera but it's just solid black. One of those videos was fun as we caught a bit of lens flaring from the moon, and you can actually see the details of the surface of the moon in the reflection. It was one of those things I just never considered before as flares coming from lights or the sun are just void of detail.
- BurningFrog 7mo agoMoonlight is reflected sunlight.
- Sharlin 7mo agoThat's obvious. But the moon is so perfectly neutral gray that the reflected light is essentially the same color as the incident sunlight.
- gorgoiler 7mo agoReminds me of one of the best new comedy series in years, Very Important People, doing improvised spoof interviews: https://www.tiktok.com/@veryimportantpeopleshow/video/7319578594374831406 https://www.tiktok.com/@veryimportantpeopleshow/video/731957...
- thaumasiotes 7mo ago> even though moonlight is often thought of as bluish and sunlight as yellowish! Is that... true? Sunlight is seen as yellow, of course, but the moon is usually thought of as white.
- Sharlin 7mo agoThat's fair, I was thinking of how night, or twilight, as a whole is associated with cool hues, but it's probably true that moonlight in itself is usually thought of as neutral white.
- syncsynchalt 7mo agoSunlight is yellowish in atmosphere since some blue's been scattered by the atmosphere[1], but it's white in space. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
- thaumasiotes 7mo agoI don't think that's right. Sunlight is white in the atmosphere too. Scattering causes the sun, not the light, to look yellow, and so sunlight is thought of as yellow.
- Sharlin 7mo agoScattering doesn’t really make the sun to appear yellow except when it’s low, behind a lot of air. When it’s above 30° or so it just looks blinding, neutral white (or non-blinding neutral white if there’s suitable cloud cover or other filter in front of it). Even though a lot of the blues are scattered around, the sun still looks just white when it’s high in the sky. But when the sun does look yellow, its light is yellow too, that’s the definition of "looks yellow". And the golden hour paints everything in very iconic yellow-orange hues. The light as integrated over the whole sky is still white (modulo whatever’s scattered back into space), but the light that comes from the direction of the sun is clearly tinted yellow and the light from the rest of the sky is clearly tinted blue.
- nomilk 7mo agoThanks. Until you pointed out it's Earth at night, I had no clue what was supposed to be special about this photo (it appeared suspiciously pixelated for something 'high res', and neighbouring pixels seemed to contrast in colour rather than smoothly complementing as most photos do - but I guess that's random patches of city lights being captured by the camera). Cool stuff! Something I haven't figured out is: what is that yellow/whitish smudge toward the center of the earth? It looks like camera glare or a reflection?
- Sharlin 7mo agoYeah, it's a reflection from the window, of something inside the ship.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- mr_toad 7mo agoWhat does it look like to human eyes? Is there enough light for a person up there to see colour, or would it look like black and white (like a moonlit scene on the ground).
- Sharlin 7mo agoNo color, I’m pretty sure.
- rachel_rig 7mo ago[flagged]
- TimByte 7mo agoThe camera is compensating for extremely low light, so you end up with something that looks closer to a daylight exposure
- Sharlin 7mo agoI know. Apparently this was shot at ISO 51,200.