NASA's Artemis II mission has delivered a photograph that is equal parts stunning and scientifically illuminating - if you'll pardon the pun. One of the first images sent back to Earth shows our planet's full disk bathed not in direct sunlight, but in moonlight, which is a bit like finding out your flashlight has been powered by another flashlight all along.
The photo was snapped by an Artemis crew member from the Orion spacecraft after it completed the translunar injection burn, sending it on a trajectory toward the Moon. From Orion's perspective, Earth eclipses the Sun, leaving only a sliver of solar light peeking around the bottom right edge. Green auroras, caused by charged particles from the Sun interacting with Earth's atmosphere, glow at the poles - lower left and upper right, respectively. The Sun's light also produces a fuzzy glow known as zodiacal light, visible to the lower right of Earth, created by sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust. Data from NASA's Juno spacecraft suggests Mars may be a significant source of that dust. Venus, Earth's other planetary neighbor, appears as a bright object in the bottom right.
On Earth itself, city lights are visible in Spain, Portugal, northern Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil. The crew used a digital camera with an ISO setting of 51,200 - for comparison, daytime photography typically uses ISO 100 or 200 - to capture these low-light details, aided by a full Moon's illumination.
Previous nighttime views of Earth from space have also inspired awe. The Apollo 12 crew photographed Earth eclipsing the Sun in 1969, and astronaut Alan Bean later painted his impressions. More recently, ISS astronauts have photographed the planet at night from low Earth orbit, while NASA's Black Marble nighttime lights product suite uses satellite observations for sustained data records. The Artemis II image stands out as a single human-captured full-disk view showing many low-light features at once.
Cindy Evans, senior exploration scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, was working in the Science Evaluation Room during the mission and was among the first to see the image. “I love the image so much because it was taken with Earth in moonshine, and shows Earth as a solar system body, a dynamic planet interacting with the solar wind, and a place harboring life,” she said. Miguel Román, Deputy Director for Atmospheres and Data Systems at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, noted the image's scientific value: “It speaks powerfully to the breadth of what NASA does across science and human exploration.” He added, “Earth at night is visually compelling, physically complex, and scientifically underexplored. I see this image as a glimpse of what Earth science can become in the future.”