"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)
Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
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Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that one (art002e000193~large.jpg) is only 287kB. The Lightroom-processed one is 6.2MB. I would expect original to be heavier.
The resolutions are different, 1920x1280 vs. 5568x3712. Also possibly different JPEG quality settings.
Could be the thumbnail / preview image generated alongside the raw
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Lightroom one was processed from raw. Also, by brightening it a lot, the noisy high-ISO grain becomes more apparent. Noise is famously incompressible, so it leads to a much larger file size.
Brightening the image may make the iso noise easier to see, but it doesn't create it.
Noise that's easier to see will not be compressed away by the JPEG compression. JPEG is basically just DCT + thresholding. Any higher amplitude noise is going to stay and increase the final file size.
Also, pulling more data from your 14 bit or 16 bit raws results in more noise in the end compared to the straight-out-of-camera 8 bit JPEGs.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd have probably shot it wide open at f/2.8 rather than cranking the ISO up to 51200. Incredibly impressed at the steady hands for a sharp image at 1/4 s shutter speed though! Maybe they just let the camera float in space with the mirror up, triggering it remotely.
> I'd have probably shot it wide open at f/2.8 rather than cranking the ISO up to 51200. One of the reasons the D5 supposedly was chosen was because of its high dynamic and good low light performance. It can go up to ISO 3,280,000: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_D5 The D5 has been used on the ISS, including EVAs, since 2017, so is a known quantity: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cameras_on_the_Interna…
The good low light performance was amazing for its time (10 years ago), and it still holds up decently today. But let's not kid ourselves -- it has been clearly surpassed by modern backside illuminated CMOS sensors like the one on the Z9.
EDIT: sorry, it seems I'm wrong. I just checked https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm and while the Z9 has the clear edge with 2 more stops of dynamic range at low ISO, the D5 actually pulls ahead at high ISO. Perhaps the technological improvements haven't been that much for the shot-noise dominated regime.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#175Looking 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...
Wild. I saw a quick glance and assumed the Z9 but the D5 is near the peak of the DSLR world so I guess.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#176"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)
Technically correct, the best kind of correct. After all, the moon is in Earth's orbit.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#177I 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…
Thanks. 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…
Yeah, it's a reflection from the window, of something inside the ship.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Lightroom one was processed from raw. Also, by brightening it a lot, the noisy high-ISO grain becomes more apparent. Noise is famously incompressible, so it leads to a much larger file size.
Brightening the image may make the iso noise easier to see, but it doesn't create it.
But lossy-codecs job is to utilize psychovisual tricks to discard as much high-frequency information as possible, whilst remaining similar visual effects. If you increase the brightness in RAW and then re-encode the JPEG - more noise is being pulled up in the visual spectrum, therefor less of that information (filesize) is discarded.
For example, if you render Gaussian noise in photopea and export as JPEG 100% quality, it has 9.2MB. If you reduce the exposure by -2 it goes down to 7.8MB. That's partially because more parts of the noise are effectively black pixels, but also I believe because of the earlier mentioned effect.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#179the pale blue dot.
if anything in life gives me pleasure is I have experienced life, with its highs and downs on this little speck.
Re: Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth
#180If 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.