GIF by Reddit user ResponsibilityNo2097 During the Artemis II crewed mission around the Moon in April 2026, the NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman took a series of photographs capturing the nightside of Earth illuminated by moonlight. After the photographs were released to the public, a Redditor combined several of them to create a dynamic image. In this video essay, the popular US YouTuber Hank Green makes the case that – like the famed ‘Earthrise’ photo, the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ image popularised by Carl Sagan, and the Hubble Deep Field pictures containing thousands of galaxies – watching this brief timelapse is an awe-inspiring experience, even if it doesn’t necessarily convey any new information.
However, unlike those earlier images, its message isn’t one of our extraordinary smallness. Instead, with its dance of naturally occurring and human-made phenomena, the story it tells is one of our growing significance – for better and for worse. The majestic Earth as seen through the eyes of astronauts orbiting above Close encounters of a different kind – what if Venus, Neptune or Saturn hovered close by?
How humanity’s first glimpse of the earth from space changed our species forever How an unplanned picture from Apollo 8 altered humanity’s perspective of Earth Burning ice, metal clouds, gemstone rain – tour the strangest known exoplanets Visualisations explore what the deep future holds for our night sky From zero to 5,000 – music and visuals express 30 years of exoplanet discoveries What are you really seeing when you see magnificent images of space? A dizzying ‘advertisement for Earth’ shows the beauty and scars of our planet
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