Hello, World (photograph)
Photograph of Earth by Reid Wiseman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hello, World is a photograph of Earth taken by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman aboard the Orion spacecraft during the Artemis II mission, published April 3, 2026.[1][2][3] Captured during the spacecraft's outbound journey toward the Moon, it shows a full disk near complete Earth hemisphere.[4] It and a preceding lower-exposure snapshot are the first such photographs taken by a human since 1972, when the The Blue Marble was taken by the Apollo 17 crew.[2]
Having been illuminated by the full moon, the nighttime photograph had moreover been taken with a long exposure and the maximum ISO setting of 51,200.
Image
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The image shows Earth at night illuminated by moonlight from a full Moon. Africa dominates the center of the frame, with the Sahara desert largely unobscured by cloud cover and parts of Europe visible to the north; the Iberian Peninsula appears at the lower left. The Atlantic Ocean is visible, with South America to the right.[2] City lights are visible across the night side, while a bright lens flare near the center is caused by window reflection. The image is rotated about 146° from a standard north-up orientation, and the outlines of Orion's windows are visible as dark cutouts along the edges of the frame. Along Earth's limb, the upper atmosphere appears as a thin band of airglow. Auroras are visible near both poles. Sunlight refracted along the horizon produces a faint afterglow and is reflected in space by interplanetary medium as the zodiacal light. The planet Venus appears as a bright point below and to the right of Earth.[5][2][6]
The photograph was taken on April 3, 2026,[7][a] about a day after launch, shortly after completion of the trans-lunar injection burn that placed Orion on a trajectory toward the Moon.[8] Wiseman captured the image through a spacecraft window using a Nikon D5 camera with a long exposure (f/4, ISO 51,200, 1/4-second shutter speed).[9][b] NASA also released a lower-exposure "night" version of the image, captured shortly beforehand, which emphasizes city lights and reduces reflected glare.[10]
The title "Hello, World" alludes to the crew's greeting and to the traditional test message used in computer programming.[11]
See also
- First images of Earth from space
- List of notable images of Earth from space
- List of photographs considered the most important
- Earthset, another photograph by Reid Wiseman from the Artemis II mission, taken on April 6, 2026
- Earthrise, a December 24, 1968 photograph by William Anders from the Apollo 8 mission
Notes
- The image metadata indicates that it was taken using a Nikon D5 camera with a 14–24 mm f/2.8 lens at an aperture of f/4, an exposure time of 1/4 second, and an ISO setting of 51,200; the exposure was set manually and the image was later processed using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic.
