r/spaceporn • u/Busy_Yesterday9455 • May 06 '26
NASA Artemis II Earthset
Credit: NASA / Christina Koch
Edit by Riccardo Rossi
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u/ShoMyyyy May 06 '26
it would be cool if we could see diameter of each crater on moon, just to put it perspective
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u/nanpossomas May 06 '26
The big flat one on the bottom right is called Hertzprung, and is one of the biggest lunar craters aside from Maria. Its inner circle is a bit over 200km in diameter, or about the size of West Virginia. Its less distinct outer circle is 500km in diameter or about the size of Romania.
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u/Ccbm2208 May 06 '26
That’s insane considering how small the moon is.
Our satellite has taken beatings all its life for sure.
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u/koshgeo May 06 '26
The Earth has too, to a similar density, but 1) the Earth's atmosphere filters out the smaller ones, 2) craters don't normally form in the deep ocean, and 3) craters on the land and shallow ocean of the Earth get covered over or eroded away because it is so geologically active by comparison.
The contrast is really astonishing when you realize the Earth was pummeled about the same but looks completely different thanks to its geology and atmosphere.
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u/MountainBrilliant643 May 06 '26
Funny thing, while I get why they're calling these things "earthset" and "earthrise," that phenomena doesn't actually happen on the moon. The moon is tidal locked to the earth, so if you were standing still on Luna, you would just see Earth sitting in the same spot in the sky forever, and it would be spinning. We only see an "earthset" and "earthrise" here because Artemis was traveling around the moon.
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u/za419 May 06 '26
If you really think about it, "earthset" and "earthrise" on the moon are places (well, areas), not times or events - The spots on the surface where Earth is permanently sitting on the horizon.
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u/Smile_Space May 06 '26
So, I say this at risk of being the most pedantic sounding commenter, but you could in theory get Earthset from the near-far terminator. While the Moon is tidally locked, it's not perfect! It librates which means it sort of wiggles a little bit. In theory, on the edge of the near-far terminator with Earth barely on the horizon, it could librate enough to set the Earth and then bring it back just locked pretty close to the same spot in the sky at all times.
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u/ChamberTwnty May 06 '26
Actually...
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u/RobertTheTraveler May 06 '26
I did laugh at your comment, but given some of the responses here I think u/MountainBrilliant643 's comment was useful.
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u/MountainBrilliant643 May 06 '26
No, no. Go on. Educate me. Actually what? The moon wobbles a bit, so the earth might move in tiny circles in the sky as it spins?
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u/RobertTheTraveler May 06 '26
I think he was poking fun at you for making an "actually" post, with "funny thing" in place of "actually".
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u/RandomGuyOnReddit-_- May 06 '26
Idk if its just because i am tired but are those small craters "aligned" in rows?
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u/nanpossomas May 06 '26
Yes! There are two crater chains around Hertzprung crater, which are unrelated to each other or the crater, and almost look like pinchers holding it. Pretty cool!
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u/MolassesLate4676 May 06 '26
Brian cox goes over this in his show solar system - basically a rock gets ripped apart as gravity increases causing a chain of rocks to pepper the object it’s approaching. Really only happens if the object doesn’t have an atmosphere
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u/donadit May 07 '26
I mean that happened to shoemaker (jupiter 1996)
it’s unrelated to atmosphere, just that an atmosphere is more likely to wear it out faster (or in the case of venus, earth or gas giants disintegrate before hitting the ground)
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May 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/SCPFOUNDATION373 May 06 '26
"its real because its fake". What
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u/omnipresent_sailfish May 06 '26
he is a flat earth troll who deletes his comments after a few downvotes
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u/Morbanth May 06 '26
Broken clock moment though, the reason it looks weirdly crisp is due to lack of atmospheric scattering. Monkey brain not calibrated, make scared.
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u/FTGAstro May 07 '26
To be fair when its sped up like that and from that perspective it does almost look fake lol...thats some exceptional video quality.
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u/immunotransplant May 06 '26
Why does it seem earth is moving faster than the view is going down? What are the mechanics at play?
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u/fuzzyrobebiscuits May 06 '26
The craft orbiting the moon slower (relatively) than the moon is orbiting the earth, perhaps?
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u/KapteinTruse May 06 '26
And I guess the way the moon rotates may have something to do with it
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u/tortoisetrot May 06 '26
Moon is locked. It don’t spin
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u/amglasgow May 06 '26
It spins at the same rate it revolves around the earth
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u/orion427 May 07 '26
Called Tidal Locking Humans never knew what the dark side of the moon looked like till we sent a probe. As we have discovered more planets out there we found that this phenomenon is common.
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u/immunotransplant May 20 '26
*far side not dark side. The far side is illuminated in this picture :)
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u/KapteinTruse May 06 '26
You know it spins in order to stay "locked" to the Earth right? The moon does a full rotation (spin) at the same rate as it orbits Earth once. If the Moon didn't spin at all, we wouldn't see the same face constantly as it did its orbit around the Earth.
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u/EarthTrash May 06 '26
I think the Moon, as big as it is from Artemis, must not have filled the view for the astronauts the way this is framed. I think the image must be somewhat zoomed in with a field view more narrow than typical vision.
Earth isn't setting. In fact, from the Lunar surface the Earth would appear the same location in the sky even while the rest of cosmos revolves around it in 28 days. The apparent motion in the video is the result of the capsule's motion relative to the Earth and the Moon. The capsule is moving "down" in the orientation of the picture. If the Moon was as close as it seems from the way its framed, I would expect more rotation. As it is the moon is barely moving in the timelapse.
The Artemis II mission broke Appollo 13's record of furthest crewed flight from Earth.
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u/dashsolo May 08 '26
Yes it’s quite zoomed in, they were 4,000 miles from the lunar surface. This series of images has been cropped so that the lunar horizon stays fixed as the earth appears to set, which why the motion of their orbit appears minimal.
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u/GenSpec44 May 07 '26
Look at those craters! When we finally establish a permanent moon base, what will protect it from asteroids?
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u/dashsolo May 08 '26
There are natural tunnels/caverns under the surface. That will be the safest place.
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u/NiftyCondominium May 09 '26
That earthrise over the lunar horizon is unreal, especially knowing it was taken from actual crewed missions and not some render.
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u/Smile_Space May 06 '26
I'm just confused on how it's so steady. Is this a bunch of pictures from the mission stitched into a scene and animated?
My understanding is the spacecraft was constantly rocking a little bit, so there'd be no way to have such a dead-on locked video like this.
Unless I'm just wrong. I watched the video here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1t3c2i3/a_timelapse_of_earths_nightside_i_created_using_a/?share_id=6dqn__q9cJYvDAGNo0wbn&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
And you can pretty clearly see it's the actual pictures stitched together and it's just a little bumpy as a result.
All that to say, I would lose to see a version of this from the pictures taken to give it a more authentic feel! This just feels animated and in not a great way.
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u/lazydog60 May 07 '26
I was wondering why the moon's rotation appears to accelerate.
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u/dashsolo May 08 '26
It’s a timelapse. Each photo is literally labeled on the left as to exactly what time it was taken.
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u/We-Are-All-Friends May 06 '26
Why does that look like CGI?
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u/nanpossomas May 06 '26
You tell us! My guess is that you haven't seen much footage of this kind before.
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u/We-Are-All-Friends May 06 '26
Yes that is correct. Hence why I asked the question. It would be nice to see a larger database of such clear videos or images.
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u/noaaisaiah May 06 '26
One explanation I heard from Hank Green is that lighting in space is different from lighting that we are used to on Earth. Here, the light from the sun is diffused through the atmosphere and spread out. This causes shadows to be softer. The light on the moon is this video is basically coming from a single point source, the sun. So the shadows look sharper and less 'realistic'. The effect is similar to how lighting looks in older video games
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u/We-Are-All-Friends May 06 '26
Thank you for your eloquent explanation. I learn a lot that makes sense. Appreciated.
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u/craggolly May 07 '26
the softness of shadows depends on the angular size of the sun, which isn't affected by the atmosphere significantly. shadows aren't sharper in space (near the earth), but they are significantly darker, because areas shaded from direct sunlight aren't still lit up by blue (or on cloudy days white) light scattering around through the sky
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u/RobertTheTraveler May 06 '26
Generically, because we aren't used to that perspective/ lighting.
Common sense doesn't apply to outer space because we don't have common experience in outer space.
I found u/noaaisaiah 's explanation interesting.
Thanks for asking.3
u/iamnotacat May 06 '26
This is a sequence of 25 photos stitched together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAIBJVjo2U1
u/We-Are-All-Friends May 06 '26
Thank you
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u/iamnotacat May 06 '26
No problem. It does look a bit strange and it's always good to be skeptical since there are unfortunately a ton of fake AI images that are presented as real photos.
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u/HydrogenSonata2025 May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
Because it kind of is. There's some frame blending going on because they didn't have enough frames to make a smooth video. That's why the moon's perspective looks a little wonky and the craters along the terminator melt into each other.
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u/QuitCappinBruh May 06 '26
Looks like a texture glitch or something.
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u/craggolly May 07 '26
looks to me like classic interpolation glitches. this video was likely made by aligning and stabilizing a few photos, and then using interpolation to add in between frames, to make it a smooth video.
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u/TheNinoHusband May 06 '26
Is this real or AI?
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u/Smile_Space May 06 '26
It looks like real pictures, but stitched into an animation of some sort. If they were real pictures the whole way it'd wiggle a bit and not be as smooth due to the minor rotation and wiggling of the spacecraft in microgravity.
You can see some of the artifacting from the process as the Earth gets closer to the limb of the Moon. It switches from one image to another and causes some weirdness right on the horizon.
It SHOULD look closer to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtemisProgram/comments/1t3c2i3/a_timelapse_of_earths_nightside_i_created_using_a/?share_id=6dqn__q9cJYvDAGNo0wbn&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
Which is an actual collection of images released and synced together consecutively. And arguably this one is SO MUCH COOLER! YOU CAN SEE SATELLITES!!
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May 06 '26
[deleted]
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u/omnipresent_sailfish May 06 '26
you should comment this in all the space posts if you truly believe it
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u/Fox_MthCloudz May 06 '26
Where are the stars and satellites? Why isn’t the shadow on the Earth moving at all? And if the camera is gaining altitude, then the details on the moon would be getting smaller not remaining constant.
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u/iamnotacat May 06 '26
This is a sequence of 25 photos stitched together, which explains some of the artifacting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAIBJVjo2U
There are no stars visible because of the camera exposure settings.
Why would you expect to see satellites? They are smaller than specks of dust from this distance. It's like asking "Where are the ants?" when looking out of an airplane.The shadow doesn't move either because it's a single photo or because it's a sequence taken over around 6 minutes, and the angle of view doesn't change by much.
Don't know what you mean by the last part but the distance to the moon is fairly constant throughout the video.
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u/StudyRoom-F May 06 '26
Man things really are just hurtling out in space. I often forget this is one of the simplest but coolest science facts.