Orion Spacecraft's Photo of Earth Catches Two Kinds of Glow That Surprised Viewers

Published 04/05/26 at 4:55 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Portland, Oregon) - The unearthly surprises just keep coming – as well as a sense of excitement and awe that gives you the chills. Orion and the Artemis II mission began sending back the most amazing images immediately upon launch, and one in particular has the world uniformly riveted. (Above: note the glow around the globe that becomes green at one point - NASA / Wiseman).

In fact, the shot is of the planet itself, taken by Reid Wiseman.

The photo shows our world in its entirety – but there's something uniquely interesting many have missed.

On the second day of the mission came the show-stopper: Wiseman's photo of the world we live on.

All the beauty, perspective and awe aside, it showed the remarkable little detail of two poles of the Earth with the aurora borealis firing off. As some observers noted, there's an eerie, ethereal glow at the top and the bottom of the planet. What are called “auroral ovals” are visible at the South Pole and North Pole of Earth. Experts say this was happening 100 km into the thermosphere/ionosphere.

Click to enlarge

Along with that surprise for many viewers, it also shows one other facet of Earth that is wowing (and maybe a little alarming): the thin line of our atmosphere. You can see Earth's atmosphere from a side view along the horizons, tightly hugging the globe in a slight glow. Most of our oxygen is compacted into a few miles above us and well below the top of that line, visually displaying how fragile this world really is.

Orion is the name of the spacecraft module the crew of four are flying in, but one that they have nicknamed Integrity. Artemis II is the name of the expedition. The moniker for the Artemis II Orion spacecraft (CM-003) was chosen by the astronauts.

As Portland, Oregon astronomy expert Jim Todd pointed out: “ NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, became the first people to leave Earth's orbit since the Apollo program in 1972.”

Artemis So Far - Unique Observations

Orion takes a selfie

As of about 9 p.m. Saturday, Orion is 193,000 miles from Earth 88,262 miles to the moon, traveling at 1,978 mph. A watershed moment happened late Friday (Pacific Time) when NASA announced Orion had just passed the halfway point and was then closer to the moon than to Earth.

Integrity took its first selfie in space today (Saturday). Along the way of Artemis' journey, there have been tech issues with email and a toilet.

Above: seeing the Oregon coast from space via the ISS

In fact, as recently as Saturday night, NASA helped solve yet another toilet issue just before 9 p.m., giving the crew the go-ahead to dump the waste water into space.

Just after 9 p.m. came more awe-inspiring science. The crew began pointing cameras towards the moon and noted being able to see the far side now. It's a very alien look, as Koch put it: “the moon we are looking at is not the moon we're used to from Earth whatsoever.”

They described it as incredibly bright and heavily lit by the sun at this time, and they were unable to see anything but shades of lighter grays so far. However, one astronaut said the Grimaldi crater is “crystal clear and dark,” showing that at one point they will be able to make out colors and a greater range of shades.

The moon is in fact full of some wild colors, although rarely photographed that way from Earth.

Constant coverage of the mission in realtime is happening online - and on NASA TV after midnight on Portland's cable channel 30.

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