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Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

bbc.com

131–140 of 419 posts

Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

#131
post #11

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…

Moonlight is reflected sunlight.

Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

#133
post #98

Looking at the EXIF (with exiftool) for the image uploaded by NASA ( 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/a6f555e6588a98adb74eed79d...

... My only curiosity, and yeah I know orders of significance etc... Buuuuut I wonder why they didn't consider a Z5[0][1] and the Z mount 14-24, or the Z5 with an adapter for the F mount 14-24.... There's at least a pound of weight savings on the table. Specifically, I wonder if it's a fun reason? i.e. it would be interesting if there was a technical reason like 'IBIS fails miserbly' or 'increased sensor resolution a…

When you're riding a rocket that weighs 3.5 million pounds...

Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

#134

Looking at the EXIF (with exiftool) for the image uploaded by NASA ( 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/a6f555e6588a98adb74eed79d...

Any GPS data? I wonder if it would pick anything up. Altitude reading would be interesting!

Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

#136
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn't do that for "a few bucks of nano banana credits" though. You could generate the imagery but that's only one line of evidence. A launch is easily detectable through multiple signals. Why would Russia and China and any other country with any degree of astronomic capability that the US has an adversarial relationship with just let them get away with lying to the world? Why wouldn't they take the opportunit…

How would they prove that no launch happened? There isn't conclusive evidence of an absence of launch, and if there were it would be accused as being fake and a ploy from American enemies to discredit them.

> There isn't conclusive evidence of an absence of launch, ...

A launch is detectable seismically, visually, on radar, etc. There's a lot of investment in being able to detect launches (to detect the launch of nuclear weapons). It would be screamingly obvious if the launch was fake. It would absolutely be conclusive if there were no seismic activity, no radar return, they couldn't detect the spacecraft presently, etc. At least for a definition of "conclusive" that can be operationalized - conclusiveness is a judgement call about when evidence is sufficient and not reaching some theoretical 100% certainty. Which can't possibly be reached for any claim for the reason you outlined; you can always invent some negative counterclaim that can't be entirely dismissed, even for claims like "the sky is blue".

It's also pretty easy to find people who were physically there to witness the launch. This wasn't a secret bunker or a barge in the middle of the ocean. It was in Florida in the late afternoon.

> ...it would be accused as being fake and a ploy from American enemies to discredit them.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have access to this data. Astronomers, geologists, petroleum engineers, backyard amateurs. The conspirators could muddy the waters but they couldn't ultimately prevail. It is many orders of magnitude easier to go to the moon than to convincingly fake it.

Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

#138

Come 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?

[dead]

Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth

#140
post #83

Looking at the EXIF (with exiftool) for the image uploaded by NASA ( 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/a6f555e6588a98adb74eed79d...

Before Lightroom it might have looked closer to this: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e000193/art002e00...

But that one (art002e000193~large.jpg) is only 287kB. The Lightroom-processed one is 6.2MB. I would expect original to be heavier.
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