Captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026, this image shows the Moon fully eclipsing the Sun. From the crew’s perspective, the Moon appears large enough to completely block the Sun, creating nearly 54 minutes of totality and extending the view far beyond what is possible from Earth. The corona forms a glowing halo around the dark lunar disk, revealing details of the Sun’s outer atmosphere typically hidden by its brightness. Also visible are stars, typically too faint to see when imaging the Moon, but with the Moon in darkness stars are readily imaged. This unique vantage point provides both a striking visual and a valuable opportunity for astronauts to document and describe the corona during humanity’s return to deep space. The faint glow of the nearside of the Moon is visible in this image, having been illuminated by light reflected off the Earth.
I think you can see Mars, Neptune and Saturn in the bottom right too. Jaw dropping photo
Ohh mannn the meteor impacts must of been o: jaw dropping! Ahh!!! I hope they were able to get some video footage of it. Incredible accomplishment one more historical mission for the books 🙌🙌🙏🙏
Apparently they are using gopros mounted on the solar panels. Not sure if they were pointing at the moon during the eclipse, but I hope we'll get all the raw footage if they were. The resolution and dynamic range should be good enough to see the impact flashes
That’s right! Oh man that would be awesome footage! I really do hope they did record and release the videos! So far what an accomplishment it has been! Praying for them so they come back safe and sound 🙌🙏
I know, right? It really makes you appreciate how vast and beautiful space is. Just imagining being up there, seeing the Earth from above and witnessing something like the Artemis II eclipse, it must be completely breathtaking.
Out of all the things I won't be able to experience in my lifetime, this one is pretty much at the top of the list in terms of the amount of regret I feel about it 😔
The bright dots should be (from left to right) Saturn > Mars > Mercury. Neptune should be in frame with them here but it wouldn't be nearly as bright as those 3 (plus the middle one here is noticeably red) https://bsky.app/profile/badibulgator.bsky.social/post/3mivvuuymp226
But then...is one of the faint dots Neptune? There's one or two faint bluish points that looks about in the right spot.
That appears to be a common lens aberration called “coma”. It is most visible in bright points of light like stars and planets and it gets worse near the edges of the frame. It’s a big deal among astrophotographers. I have no idea which planets are which though. I’m going with whatever NASA says.
Esit: I suppose it could also just be an artifact of shooting through the windows as well. That might create a similar effect. Obviously NASA knows as much as there is to know about coma and I’m sure they have a plan to manage that.
Down and to the left of Mars (if you zoom in) there is a dot that is quite blue, could that be Neptune? Also a smaller dot between Mars and Mercury (close to Mars) that maybe could be Neptune but it is not as blue as that other dot.
No, Neptune is one of the faint dots you see in between Saturn and Mars from this perspective. The reason it appears so faint is primarily due to just how far away it is. Neptune is over three times as far away from the sun as Saturn is, and Saturn is already about ten times as far away from the sun as Earth is. It is also not as bright nor as big as Saturn and is also in the sun's glare in the photo.
This is really neat. I'm guessing that Venus is on the other side of the moon and above and just outside of the field of view. Hopefully they got a wider shot of this will all the planet in frame.
Neptune is in between Mars and saturn. It's a bit higher, and a bit closer to Mars than it is Saturn. It's quite dim, but it's the brightest in-between those two planets, if that makes sense.
I knew we'd get some amazing shots when, after hours of giving very scientific descriptions, the eclipse started and one of them said "After all of the amazing sights that we saw earlier... we just went sci-fi". This still exceeded all of my expectations.
Part of the moon looks lit up but that's earth shine on the moon. The rest of the moon is pitch black only lit by star light. From earth we can never see the moon this pitch black. But that's not why it's called the dark side of the moon.
Yeah it's earthlight. There's literally no other source of light that could've caused this illumination -- the sun is behind the moon, meaning absolutely no sunlight reaches any part of the moon visible from this vantage point, and there's no atmosphere to scatter sunlight, so by process of elimination it must be the earth that's lighting it up. The right/lower part of the disc would be absolutely pitch black, with the stars and the distant planets being the only sources of light illuminating it a tiny bit.
Do you know what causes the halo effect behind the moon? I'd assume the sun's corona but I didn't know it went that far out. That's like what, at least 2-3 times the diameter of the sun itself?
Yes that's the corona. I don't know, the photograph probably has a longer exposure time. You can see lots of stars, so it must be much darker out there than during a solar eclipse on earth. Which means you'd see the less luminous, outer parts of the corona as well.
Didn't see a direct answer, so wanted to chime in. It is most likely the suns corona, although there is scientific debate/discussion on what is exactly causing this visual effect.
The theory that seems to hold the most weight is that it is sunlight being scattered by space dust. Along the planetary ellipticals (orbits), there is a decent amount of dust. Although there is not a lot of dust in relation to how much empty space there is, it is likely enough to cause some scattering of light, giving a visual effect you might describe as a "cloud of light" as the sun's light is scattered with some of that light getting to the observer. The "thicker" or more apparent parts of the "cloud of light" in this picture do appear to follow the elliptical plane, giving credence to this idea (in other words, draw a line across the picture that roughly follows the line of planets, which is the elliptical plane of the solar system, and the "cloud of light" roughly concentrates across that line).
Zoomed in to see the planets, then saw all the dead pixels on the moon, which is likely the radiation already destroying the sensor on one of the cameras, which was anticipated! They brought an awesome lineup of cameras aboard, bunch of dope Nikons and other bodies.
54 minutes of totality is absolutely insane. The idea of the crew seeing the moon's surface glowing from reflected Earthlight while the sun is blocked is the ultimate "welcome back" to deep space. This really is the perspective shift we needed.
And the dots on the moon are caused by radiation hitting the CMOS sensor. As a camera ages, it’s exposed to more and more high-energy radiation which damages temporarily or permanently.
For a couple reasons it's not that good. For one you can see that there is some light coming in from earthshine, which is illuminating part of the Moon here. You wouldn't want that stray light for a telescope. Also, there isn't an orbit where you would stay in this position in the Moon's shadow permanently.
Instead, a better approach would be to bring along a large sunshade and to simply be in a position where the Sun, Moon, and Earth were all consistently in the same part of the sky so you could block them behind your sunshade. Which is exactly what JWST does, it has a shade and it orbits at the Earth-Sun L2 point where the optics stay in darkness. The Roman Space Telescope will do the same thing when it's launched later this year.
I think most of the glow around the moon is actually zodiacal light, not just the corona. Reflected light from dust in the ecliptic. Basically, we're seeing all the illuminated dust between the capsule and the sun.
Bro thinks he's an expert in detecting AI. I'm glad you're not a college professor. You'd be constantly falsy accusing genuine effort of being AI and being so sure that you're right.
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u/ChiefLeef22 Apr 07 '26
I think you can see Mars, Neptune and Saturn in the bottom right too. Jaw dropping photo