This photo is a wide angle mosaic of two frames obtained the afternoon of August 13, 2026 in the vicinity of Joshua Tree National Park, California. Great dark masses of cloud roll overhead like a vast vat of liquid churning in slow motion. In the distance rain is falling in isolated pockets.

A visit to a friends house near Joshua Tree, California happened during a day of dramatically glowering weather. Rain could be seen in the distance but only a few drops fell nearby. The lighting in the nearby scenery was constantly changing as the Sun was intermittently covered by clouds.

This photo was obtained today April 12, 2026 at Joshua Tree, California. In the initial exposure and in post processing I have brought down the brightness of the dazzling display and optimized the metallic looking colors. My left hand covers the Sun which would otherwise flood out the frame. A trail of disruption marks the recent passage of a plane through the cloud.

As the wind brought dynamic clouds and even a threat of rain to the High Desert I looked up and saw this nice iridescent cloud in the brilliant partly cloudy sky. I grabbed my camera, always nearby, and got this image of the wonderful colors. The Sun was covered by by other hand.

This photo was made from Joshua Tree, California showing the waning crescent Moon in the sky, accompanied by a cloud whose shapes I found intriguing. Whenever I got a chance I looked up at the Moon during the mission, although it wasn't visible from my part of the world during the actual Lunar flyby.

The Moon this morning from Joshua Tree, several hours away from the return of the mission that just visited it. The intriguing cloud came and went swiftly.

This is a photograph made by the Artemis II crew just after the Sun went behind the Moon from their vantage point. The inner Zodiacal Light and outer corona form a diffuse glow around the hidden Sun, from which radiates spikes and a general radial texture whose details constantly change.

The view of the Solar corona the Artemis II Astronauts had just after the Sun went behind the Moon. I have brought out the delicate fan like radial detail of the Sun's corona, whose entire span can be seen during Total Solar Eclipse from Earths surface where the Moon happens to just cover the Sun.

This s really cool. It's possible in ancient times such things were done as maps, but have perished.

Bottom: the original Artemis II photo. Top: My treatment of that photo to enhance a little the definition of the brightness contours of the zodiacal light. I have also balanced the color of the zodiacal light to be more neutral, like the hidden corona.

Here is the original (bottom) and my treatment, which subtly brought out the brightness contours and neutralized the overall color. The Z light extends a fair distance, roughly 80 degrees wide at the Sun and roughly 40 degrees wide along the zodiacal band, with a brighter bulge at the Gegenschein.

This processed and retouched Apollo 11 photo is my attempt to bring out detail in the best of several attempts to photograph this dim light sight on the way to the first Lunar landing. The photo was made on black and white film exposed for some seconds, all but one which were too dim or motion blurred to be useful. The Sun is just behind the Moon at the 5:00 position, its position hinted at by the brighter inner glow. Such photography in 1969 under these conditions was barely possible.

Here is the last time such a sight was seen by human eyes, as Apollo 11 briefly saw the Sun eclipsed by the Moon during its outbound journey. The Earth facing side is lit by Earth shine on the right. The inner Zodiacal Light shines from behind the Moon. Photographed on B&W film with a long exposure.

This is my processed version of a Nikon photograph made during the Artemis II mission as the Sun was behind the Moon. The image was a 2 second exposure at F/2.0 using a setting of ISO 1600. Obviously care went into obtaining this image, whose only minor cabin interior reflection I have retouched out. I have adjusted the contrast to bring out the brightness contours of the wide elongated softly defined glow of the inner Zodiacal Light. To the lower right of the Moon are the bright planets, left to right. Saturn, Mars and Mercury. A cool gray 'Earthlight' illuminates the Earth facing hemisphere of the Moon, showing hints of topography and the dark lava plains. I add my name to the chain of attribution when my processing reaches a threshold that differentiates it sufficiently from the original to warrant acknowledgement of being a departure from the original image file as released. It is not a claim of copyright, that is explicitly done only in the rare instances of my artistic contribution significantly altering the original past a threshold of uniqueness. Attribution would be nice if any of these more 'casually' processed images appear elsewhere.

This view perhaps best shows the elongated diffuse glow of the Zodiacal Light extending from beyond the Moon. I have adjusted the original image to optimize its visibility here. In past posts I dwell at length on the Zodiacal Light, which can be readily seen at the right seasons from Joshua Tree.

On the left is my processed version of the Artemis II photo of the corona emerging from behind the Moon. On the right is the corona as recorded at about that time by SOHO, a Solar observation satellite which monitors the Sun's activity.

Here's the corona at about that time as seen by the SOHO Solar observation satellite, compared with the corona photographed during the Artemis II Lunar flyby. The other side of the corona will be seen in the sunset photos to be released later.

This is my treatment of an Artemis II photo of the Sun about to emerge from behind the Moon, with the corona displaying it's radial streamers. This is an extreme version of an Earthly total solar eclipse, with the Moon also covering the Sun. The diffuse glow near the bright corona is the innermost Zodiacal Light, whose glow was later seen to shine behind the entire Moon. The coronal details were brought out by sharpening and merging such treatments of the inner and outer corona.

Some of the highlight photos from the Lunar flyby are coming in. Here is an outstanding photo from the passage behind the Moon showing the Sun about to rise, with the Solar corona preceding it. I have processed the photo to bring out the coronal details, and removed the window reflections.

This portrait of the entire Earth was made during the early part of the Artemis II flight, when our world still loomed large in the field of view. It was pieced together from two photos made with an I phone. Australia with its reddish deserts is prominent near the middle. Phone cameras are still inferior to a dedicated quality digital camera, but their images have closed the quality gap dramatically over the years. The inherently 'luminous' quality of the Earth across its entire sunlit portion is emphasized.

Earlier in the flight some nice 'looking out the window' photos were obtained, with Earth still looming large. This whole Earth view is from two photos made at that occasion, mosaiced from two of the Astronaut's phone camera images. Australia stands out in its color from the surrounding oceans.

Astronomical space art ideally shows something of what is known about the subject as well as what it is about the subject one finds visually appealing. This is a scan of an illustration in the classic book 'The Conquest of Space' by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell. Earth is covering the Sun, with Bonestell's very narrow version of the Zodiacal Light extending from behind Earth on both sides. The moonlit Earth shows Africa and the reflection of the Moon on the oceans. A suggestion of cloud detail shows a latitudinal detail bias that was common in his Earth portrayals. In the orientation of the visual elements this painting, done a lifetime ago, carried forward a vision that has just been seen by human eyes and photographed with state of the art equipment. #Sciart

Space art in its roots has been an effort to anticipate sights that future space travelers may one day see. In the late 1940s Chesley Bonestell painted a moonlit Earth that appeared in 'The Conquest of Space'. This modest work shows a view broadly similar to that revealed in the new Artemis photo.

Here's another version, combining the two different exposures made in quick succession. One much darker exposure made the bright limb stand out more from the rest, the widely circulated longer exposure brought out the dim light details. Combining the two images helps to restore the brightness range.

Yes, it appears to be.

This photograph of the night side of Earth was obtained yesterday after the completion of the trans Lunar engine burn. The original image has been rotated to have North near the top, and the overall tonal values have been adjusted to in my judgement better represent the brightness range between the Moonlit Earth and the bright limb. I have manually removed a couple interior lights reflections from the image. Venus is at the upper left, and the dim fuzzy conical Zodiacal Light looms from behind Earth. The hidden Sun is behind the upper left portion of Earth. Stars are recorded, a rarity in such photography. Aurorae are visible as light green outlines standing apart from the polar regions. Across the entire night side a detached dim olive green 'Airglow' layer outlines the edge, or 'limb' of Earth. City lights are clustered near the coastal regions of the land masses.

The Artemis II crew are well equipped for photography and are paying attention to the opportunities. On the outbound leg of their journey to the Moon this photo showing global scale dim light phenomena was obtained. I have removed the interior cabin lights reflections and adjusted the brightness.

This is a wide angle photographic mosaic obtained with a Canon 6D digital SLR on a tripod obtaining exposures of 3.2 seconds at ISO 1600, with the F stop fairly high at F/7.1 to try to minimize image degradation at the edges. Four exposures were manually mosaiced in Photoshop. The overexposed area near the Moon was partially brought out by isolating that part of the RAW image file and superimposing a highly brightness adjusted version of that onto the mosaiced area. I then manually painted in Photoshop to reconstruct the sky brightness within the hopelessly burned out area near the Moon, to make the sky give way to the overexposed disk of the Moon itself.

The cloud ceiling hid the nearly full Moon above the windy High Desert except for a brief interval between 2 and 3 AM local time. Before starting a time lapse sequence I made a wide angle mosaic of the Moon lighting up the clouds. The Moon was hidden after this but decent footage was captured.

This is outdated as the launch time slipped. the phase should be a crescent, thinning by the day if there are delays.

The Sunset of March 28, 2026 could be anticipated because of a stable wide 'slab' of cloud in the low Western sky that hid the Sun for a time in the late afternoon. As the Sun peeked below this cloud and proceeded to set, low hanging extensions of this cloud began to be lit. As I set up my cameras this lighting was shifting, fading and reappearing as it changed color. By the time this photo was made the undersides of the cloud mass were illuminated by the highly reddened last rays of sunlight shining through hundreds of miles of very clean air. Only the reddest rays made it that far, and suggest the color of the last bit of the Sun visible above the faraway horizon one would see from an aircraft among those clouds.

This sequence of photos of the Sunset of March 28, 2026 shows its episodic and particularly colorful aspects. A portion of the underside of the cloud mass extending to the left, South, was first lit in an expanding region an orange salmon color along protruding ridges, then this faded and a region to the West was suddenly bathed in a vivid crimson illumination. The wind had been blowing all day and the air was probably very clean as it passed across the region between ocean and the the High Desert, causing the saturated reddening of the last highly filtered sunlight falling on the undersides of the clouds. For a time intriguing cloud shapes were outlined in the lurid light, then the shadow of Earth finally brought an end to the illumination of the Sun one would be seeing at the altitude of those clouds. For a time the distant higher clouds far to the West along the horizon persisted in their red lighting, indirectly illuminating the West facing portions of the closer opaque cloud shapes. Finally these distant clouds yielded their lighting and all the clouds, near and far, became dark silhouettes against the orange horizon hugging twilight.

Sunrises and sunsets in the High Desert never get old. Each has unpredictable aspects such as if and where the clouds may be illuminated, the line of sight of the clouds to the Sun and other factors. On Saturday March 28 2026 the factors lined up nicely and gave some nearby clouds vivid lighting.

Yeah, Halley was a modest show then. I got only one good look at it through a large telescope in mid April. Hale/Bopp was long known to be approaching and could be followed in binoculars for months before it became prominent about a year after Hyakutake put on its' show.

Very nice. Film images show the color variations nicely. This was an especially photogenic comet with so much of it falling within a modest brightness range that one exposure could capture.

Comet Hyakutake was a spectacular sight in the early evening skies 30 years ago. The photos you will see of this comet are almost all on film, which as a medium had by then matured in its low light capabilities and in the quality of the cameras available to dedicated amateurs. I drove from the Los Angeles area to a large parking lot at Mt Pinos, which its altitude and distance from LA made an accessible dark sky site in those days. It was indeed a Dark Sky sight, as the long tail was washed out by urban skies. I made sketches of the comet, which bisected the skies overhead, using pencil on pieces of white poster board juggling a penlight in the process so I could see what I was doing. As soon as I got home I made Photoshop paintings of my recollection of the sight referring to the drawings which had brighter stars marked in. Here we see the comet with Ursa Major, the 'Big Dipper' to Americans, at the middle of this view with Ursa Minor, the 'Little Dipper' and Polaris the Pole Star at far right. Next time you see those constellations imagine this comet among them as we saw it on those magical nights 30 years ago. In past centuries everyone with clear weather could see something like this, but by the 90s it required a special trip to do justice to the sight. Now one must drive much further to escape the regional light pollution.

Comet Hyakutake as seen through a 10.1 inch Dobsonian telescope (circular view) and in 9X63 binoculars that I had purchased for Halley's comet a decade before. A delicate fan like radiance with a sharp edge could be seen emerging from the nucleus like a cone of light, with a more distinct bright 'spine' to the inner tail extending directly away from the direction of the Sun. Photoshop painting based on sketches and my visual impression.

30 years ago Comet Hyakutake was passing across the evening skies, its dramatic brightening combining with a tail approaching 80 degrees long looking like a huge searchlight beam across the sky. It was the first truly spectacular comet since West in 1976 and Halley in 1986. From visual observations.

Henry Moore, an Astrogeologist who studied cratering rates at all scales, told me about a million years when I asked him how long the footprints would last. Perhaps the overall contours would last longer, except for new craters. Some day, pristine flat surfaces should be left to study their erosion.

This photo gives an idea of the intensity of the colors seen in the Sunset of March 16, 2026. For a brief glorious interval the floating broken layer of cloud at just the right altitude was bathed in the very red filtered sunlight that has been filtered through hundreds of miles of clean air.

This sequence of photos shows the changes in illumination during the Sunset of March 16 2026. The color of the light on the clouds becomes redder and the Earth shadow becomes defined as it approaches the horizon, leaving a dwindling distant but very intense last lighting on the distant clouds. A lurid afterglow remained as the clouds were then softly lit by the dwindling but brilliant red clouds at the distant horizon they could 'see'. A very nice peaceful interval in the High Desert.

A great Sunset marked the end of March 16, 2026 in the High Desert. Clouds gathered toward the West near the end of the day, forming as the setting Sun's light started reaching their bottom surfaces. The purity of the colors of sunlight filtered through long paths of clean air was demonstrated.

My color observations of the Total Lunar Eclipse of March 3, 2026, painted in Photoshop. I used a 10 inch Dobsonian telescope to watch the shadow's progress and the colors that I saw inside the shadow. I furiously sketched on printed Moon images the areas where distinct colors appeared, writing them on the sketch within their borders. I also made some tonal sketches, and obtained telephoto photos to help establish the tonal values within the shadow. The idea is to preserve a visual impression, as most photography of these events is processed to make the shadow colors too saturated and bright compared to how they appear. This was even more true in the days of film, when virtually all Lunar eclipses photographed a saturated red orange. I was busy every moment, enjoying the view but dedicated to recording my visual impression. All the while I'm listening to WWV on a portable short wave radio, the digital voice of the Time God. Each sketch had the time noted, and after Totality ended the Moon proceeded to leave the round Earth shadow and steadily return to normal as dawn broke. After the telescope, chairs tripods etc were put away I then started reducing my sketches and photos to a set of digital paintings of the event. I worked in this digital painting for 11 hours. I have been paying attention to and making color records of Lunar eclipses since 1975, when I saw what is still the reddest bright totality I have ever seen. From oil paint to acrylic to digital painting I have carried on this tradition. #Sciart

This morning's Lunar Eclipse was fairly typical, with orange tan predominating in the shadow through binoculars and to the naked eye. Through the telescope the variety of regional colors could be examined as they came and went. This is my painted portrayal of the colors seen inside the Earth shadow.

This diagram shows what may be expected as the Moon enters and leaves the Earths shadow during the Total Lunar Eclipse of March 3, 2026. The Moon moves from right to left with the Northern Celestial pole beyond the top, the guide made for local circumstances in Southern California. Geographically we are well placed to see the event, and the weather prospects appear excellent. The best of luck with the weather wherever you are. Although intriguing with the naked eye as the Full Moon turns red and the skies darken with the stars coming out, any optical aid like binoculars or a small telescope would be rewarding during Totality. The distance to the Moon causes the Earth shadow to have a fuzzy outer zone, the 'Penumbra', This is entered imperceptibly at first at 12:44 AM Pacific Time, as only a little of the Solar disk is yet covered by Earth from the view of an observer on the Moon. Further into the shadow the darkening accelerates as the Sun is nearly covered for the Lunar observer. The Moon is entirely within the inner 'Umbra' zone, the shadow proper, at about 3:04 AM. From the Moon the Sun is then hidden by the bulk of the Earth. However, the Sunlight is refracted around part of Earth and filtered by the atmosphere, making a dazzling very thin 'ring' around Earth whose brightest colors produce the predominant shadow colors. Deepest into the shadow the reddest and dimmest rays make it through the thin atmosphere surrounding Earth. In essence we are seeing the light of all the sunrises and sunsets taking place on Earth at that moment. The richest range of shadow colors should be best shown at mid Totality at 3:34 AM. Then the Moon will reach the shadow edge again at 4:03 AM. thereafter the Sunlit portion will steadily overwhelm the shadow colors, and as the partial portion proceeds dawn will begin to be a factor.

Early next morning the Pacific Rim and the vast ocean it encloses will see a Total Lunar Eclipse. The Moon will pass through the Earth shadow's Southern portion, sampling the layers of shadow colors from an outer gray to subdued gold to orange and a darker more saturated red 'core'. Clear skies!

Whenever the cops stoop to resorting to 'psychics' that tells me they are short on real leads and are desperate. If one of those 'psychics' knew too much about a case they should be considered a suspect.

I would like to read this apparently interesting and timely paper, but, alas, it is behind a paywall.

This panorama of the rainbow of February 16, 2026 was made as the storm front behind the direction of this view was shedding wind driven rain, but the cloud ceiling had not yet passed overhead cutting off the sunlight. This was brilliant visually, as bright and colorful as any I have seen.

A nice rainbow very low over the NorthEastern horizon as the storm front behind us reached the High Desert. The rain was being driven by the strong winds ahead of the cloud ceiling, and for a few minutes it underwent optimum illumination for a rainbow display.

Luna 24 had no camera? Insane. The sampler could have ended up on a rock.

I'm not making a case for the payloads involved etc, in fact the swarming of the night skies by such vermin is a problem for Astronomy. I'm just sharing the amazing sight of an optimally lit twilight launch.