The Artemis II mission has delivered a remarkable image of Earth, showcasing its place within the solar system. The photograph, taken from the Orion spacecraft after the translunar injection maneuver, presents a full view of Earth illuminated not by direct sunlight, but by the faint glow of moonlight. This unique perspective, from the astronauts’ viewpoint, offers an unprecedented look at Earth’s night side, revealing details like city lights and atmospheric phenomena.
In the image, Earth obscures the Sun from Orion’s perspective, with only a sliver of light visible along its bottom right edge. Green auroras, caused by charged particles from the Sun interacting with Earth’s upper atmosphere, are seen shimmering over the polar regions.
The ambient sunlight also produces a hazy glow known as “zodiacal light,” visible on the lower right side of Earth. This phenomenon arises from sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust. Earth-based astronomers can observe zodiacal light as a faint column of light rising from the horizon during dawn or twilight at certain times of the year. Data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft suggests Mars may be a significant source of the dust particles that form zodiacal light. Venus, Earth’s planetary neighbor, appears as a bright object in the lower right portion of the image.
On Earth itself, city lights serve as evidence of human activity, with bright areas visible over Spain, Portugal, and North Africa (lower left), Sub-Saharan Africa (center left), and Brazil (center right). Digital camera technology, aided by the full moonlight illumination, enabled the capture of these and other surface and atmospheric details in low light. The crew set the camera’s ISO setting to 51,200 to enhance its light sensitivity, a significant increase from the typical ISO 100 or 200 used for daytime photography.
Previous nighttime Earth views from spacecraft, while appearing different, have inspired and informed. For instance, the Apollo 12 crew photographed Earth occulting the Sun in 1969, with astronaut Alan Bean later depicting the event in his artwork. More recently, astronauts aboard the International Space Station have photographed the planet at night from low Earth orbit. NASA’s Black Marble night lights product suite generates scientific-quality records of night lights using satellite observations on daily, monthly, and annual scales.
While these programs provide continuous data records, the Artemis II photograph stands out as a single, human-captured full-disk view showcasing numerous low-light features simultaneously. Cindy Evans, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was among the first to see the image and was struck by its beauty and the perspective it offered on solar system dynamics. “I love the picture so much because it’s Earth taken in moonlight and it shows Earth as a dynamic planet, an object interacting with the solar wind and a place that harbors life,” Evans stated.
Miguel Román, Deputy Director for Atmospheric and Data Systems at Goddard Space Flight Center, highlighted the image’s scientific value. “It’s a powerful expression of the breadth of NASA’s science and human exploration. I see this image as a preview of what Earth science might look like in the future,” Román commented, noting his own research into artificial night lights as a measurable signal of human activity.
