Artemis 2 launch - humans return to the Moon after 54 years

[PeterDonis]

You sure the sun is behind the Earth in this pic?

Yes.

Remarkable colour photography of night-side

That's because that version of the photo was put through an enhancement algorithm to brighten the night side. Here's what it looked like before that was done:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-art002e000193/

More usually we would be seeing city lights.

You can see them in the image I linked to above.

 

[Ken Fabian]

@PeterDonis - Colour me surprised; I was thinking it might be a composite image - the thin crescent and some glow further out indicating light from behind. I didn't realise night time pictures could be enhanced like that.

 

[PeterDonis]

I didn't realise night time pictures could be enhanced like that.

I suspect the enhancement algorithm made use of outside knowledge about what Earth looks like from space--for example, what clouds look like, what Africa looks like, etc--to help in making the enhanced image look realistic, even if not all of that information was in the original image.

 

[PeroK]

I suspect the enhancement algorithm made use of outside knowledge about what Earth looks like from space--for example, what clouds look like, what Africa looks like, etc--to help in making the enhanced image look realistic, even if not all of that information was in the original image.

Plenty of grist for the conspiracy mill!

 

[jurica_c]

Have humans ever landed on the Moon?

 

[Ken Fabian]

So... like a composite image but not?

 

[PeroK]

So... like a composite image but not?

It's a spectacular image, but it's essentially fake. It's not what the crew saw. This raises the question of what is allowable as enhancement or alteration before you have to declare something as "synthetic".

 

[Klystron]

Have humans ever landed on the Moon?

Well I met Buzz Aldrin a few times when I worked at NASA Ames. He definitely appeared human. Not as sure about Neil Armstrong <joke>. He might be super-human.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

It's a spectacular image, but it's essentially fake. It's not what the crew saw. This raises the question of what is allowable as enhancement or alteration before you have to declare something as "synthetic".

The human eye adapts well to darkness, although it doesn't see colour well at low light intensity. The earth was lit by full moonlight. If I just save the darker image and "auto-adjust" colour I get quite a similar result, although the available copy of the darker image is lower resolution, so I don't get all the detail.

 

[russ_watters]

It's a spectacular image, but it's essentially fake. It's not what the crew saw. This raises the question of what is allowable as enhancement or alteration before you have to declare something as "synthetic".

Nah, if that were true it would mean basically all astrophotos are "fake". They are brightened to the limit of available data. They might have 65,000 levels of brightness (16bit) and only use the bottom few hundred for most. Plus the dynamic range is huge. Solar eclipse photos might be half a dozen different exposures in a composite.

Though if you were led to believe "this is what they saw" that would be misleading.

 

[berkeman]

Plenty of grist for the conspiracy mill!

Have humans ever landed on the Moon?

Just a friendly reminder that PF is a science forum and conspiracy theory nonsense does not belong here. Enough said (hopefully).

 

[sbrothy]

The name Orion had me confused for a second until I looked it up. I was 97% sure we weren't talking about the old type of Orion but in these days it's hard to know anything for sure. Exciting. A lot of stuff is going on right now...

EDIT: Also, looking at the funding as according to Wiki, it doesn't even look that expensive. Relatively I better qualify it with. I'm guessing the dream is to bring boosting material into orbit cheaper.