iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

As the large storm headed my way, a wide cloud ceiling formed and spread across the region overnight. This morning was one of dramatically changing weather. Sparse clear regions admitted very reddened sunlight which illuminated the clouds first to the East, then to the Northwest.

The initial illumination on the clouds the morning of October 10, 2026 was a nice very saturated red. This was captured in a fisheye time lapse sequence as well with still frames like this one from another digital SLR camera.

Openings in the clouds toward the East allowed very red light into the local overcast area and briefly brought a glorious show to the High Desert. Here and there, rain was beginning to show itself, such as in a distant low segment of a rainbow seen here hugging the Northwest horizon on the lower right. Only red light was then available for the rainbow.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Nice! looking at the individual frames in sequence reminds me of the night club effect where a laser 'plane' illuminates slices of suspended smoke.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Here is my attempt to show the form of the nebulae surrounding the star V838 which Hubble captured. Each photo's light echo location has been approximately positioned in relation to each other: vimeo.com/manage/video...

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It took a long time for statues to regain and perhaps surpass the mastery of the Greeks and Romans.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think the twilight glows are brightening.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Beautiful volumes. Of course you may use my related processed images.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The Sunset of September 27, 2026 was an epic spectacle whose intensity and beauty were memorable. The cloud ceiling had a wide opening toward the West that admitted Sunlight which underwent progressive color changes as it briefly in turn illuminated layers of otherwise invisible cloud textures.

The Sunset of September 27th, 2026 was one of the greatest visions the sky has ever opened up and revealed to me. It was a sunset like few I can remember in many years. I knew early on what was likely as a heavy cloud ceiling was opening up far to the West with the underside textures in that part of the cloud ceiling catching the light early on from the distant sunlit clouds.

Vast connected cloud formations were in turn bathed in the last sunlight which progressively turned from a golden to orange to very red, in as pure a spectral filtering of Sunlight as I can recall seeing. One layer of cloud formations after another caught the light as the rays steadily angled upwards. The most distant yellow gold clouds were dazzling, like incandescent molten gold that defied photography. Lower layers were bathed in the reddest light that contrasted in hue with the more orange colors in the illuminated parts of the broken cloud ceiling above. Wide areas of the field of view were thus illuminated, appearing and fading one after the other like a parade of vast apparitions coming and going.

The last lit clouds gave up their lurid radiance reluctantly and with a very red final flourish. But the brilliance was still happening, withdrawing beyond the Western horizon as Earth's rotation carried us into the realm of the night. The Sunset lit clouds far away were still in itself illuminating clouds nearby. From their altitude the brilliance and colors along the horizon hundreds of miles away dominate the ambient lighting. This brought an extended 'echo' of the Sunset as every cloud surface facing West shone with that fading lurid glow, like a long slowly fading piano note after a great symphony.

I have seen many hundreds of Sunsets and sunrises, but something about this one struck me as almost like a kind of religious experience. Awestruck wonder and numbly bathing in the experience while periodically trying to preserve a visual record.

An all sky frame of the Sunset of September 27, 2026. Canon 6D with a fisheye lens. I now shoot most such sequences aimed straight up to show the entire horizon. Unfortunately due to a technical issue this became the first frame of the time lapse sequence, but I did get the extended 'afterglow'.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This morning's Sunrise was interesting not only because of the broad high wispy clouds and the setting Full Moon, there was also a nice display of 'Crepuscular rays', shadows of clouds projected across the sky upon high altitude particles occupying a layer between about 20 and 30 km altitude.

Here are two frames from an all sky Sunrise sequence from Joshua Tree, California. A Canon 6D with a fisheye lens was used to capture the entire sky and surrounding horizon at a rate of 1 frame every 10 seconds. Notable on this occasion was a strong showing of 'Crepuscular Rays', which are the shadows of distant clouds being cast upon a thin layer of suspended particles roughly 25 km high. At first they appeared over the East as golden and, higher up, pink 'rays' extending the rising morning twilight, then as the Moon was about to set the rays could be briefly seen stretching across the entire sky.

The Full Moon setting near the top of the frame as the morning twilight illuminates the high clouds. Stars and a couple planets can be seen in this long exposure photo. Made with a Canon 6D with a fisheye lens from Joshua Tree, California.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It is probably a much mutated in recopying portrait copied from imported coins.

Here is the copying degradation process in progress as Greek coins were exported to Teutonic and Celtic lands who recopied them. Generations of such copies show the disintegration of the information content into decorative markings.
Redrawn from R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Organicica e astrazione (Milan 1956)

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

On September 16 and 19th, 2026, launches from Vandenberg took place essentially at Sunset, so the actual ascents were unimpressive. However the lighting on the spreading plumes as twilight progresses is always intriguing. The shifting golden, red and luminous blue radiance warrants attention.

This launch took place on September 16, 2026 at Sunset from Joshua tree, California. Not until twilight was under way could the ascent plume be seen as a steadily distorting white diagonal line against the darkening background. As twilight progressed here the play of light and color on the stretching plume commenced.
As usual the initial illumination of the plume was the very white 'silvery' color of sunlight unfiltered by the atmosphere, which slightly 'yellows' the color of daylight on the ground. As the Sun set from the altitude of the various parts of the plume they became a golden orange then a coral pink, and finally a dim luminous blue. One wonders what the Sunset and twilight up there must look like to result in such colors.
Photographed with a digital SLR on a tripod. The colors are real but have been brought out of an intrinsically dim subject by long exposures and processing, as an Astrophotographer would reveal the colors and details in very faint celestial objects.

This is the later stages of the illumination of the launch plume from September 19, 2026 seen from Joshua Tree, California. Photographed with a digital SLR on a tripod. Parts of the plume are still being illuminated by the last very red bit of the Sun setting from that high altitude. Other portions are lit only by the blue twilight, which quickly fades. No two such events look the same, unpredictable factors make every such occasion a worthy excuse to have ones camera ready.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Nice Crepuscular ray! Are you noticing enhanced twilight glows lately? And a wonderful capture of the Zodiacal Light near the end.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I have been shooting time lapse sequences of the twilight sky lately. There seems to be an enhanced presence of high altitude floating material making the 'Purple Light'. Nothing major but enough to notice. The day to day differences in the twilight and cloud shadow presence is worth looking for.

These are frames cropped from an all sky fisheye time lapse sequence of the Twilight of September 15, 2026 as seen from the vicinity of Joshua Tree, California. I aim the camera straight up and shoot a frame every 10 seconds, often changing the shutter speed to catch up with the dimming light level. It is a procedure that requires practice, and afterward in After Effects the exposures are unified as much as possible in making a motion sequence. I cross fade the resulting frames rather than have them used sequentially as that would be too swift. The camera used is a Canon 6D using the 8-15 mm lens set to full field of view, nearly 200 degrees. The aperture has to be stopped down a high number, usually F8, to improve the sharpness especially at the edges.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Randomness is interesting to see portrayed, be it stars, clouds, rock sizes, craters etc. One can get an idea of how the mind of a given artist processes and depicts randomness into a deliberate portrayal. Sometimes artists flick paint onto black to bypass such difficulties of depicting starfields.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

An interesting aspect of painting starfields is the issue of trying to portray randomness. Some artists also handle really bright point sources by giving them spikes or halation. Here are three of my 'Star' related works, Betelgeuse (digital), Beta Lyrae (Acrylics) and the wide angle sky (acrylics)

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

As the dust storm was steadily clearing.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The Sunset of September 7 was an amazing spectacle. As the cloud ceiling of the passing tropical storm dissolved, a window for the last sunlight opened up with fortuitously glorious results. Odd cloud shapes sculpted by winds and moisture had their edges highlighted in crimson radiance.

The glorious Sunset of September 7, 2026 photographed from Joshua Tree, California.

A fisheye view from a time lapse sequence of the sunset of September 7, 2026.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I wonder what is she holding.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

He did it to show he was willing to suffer with his men, which spurred them on.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I have to hand it to the Soviets, they came up with some novel aircraft designs.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

An overhead view of the Viking 2 landing site, based on the surface photography and available maps of the sample field and various references. This was drawn with ink on a scratchboard sheet which had a printed gray dot screen on it, scraping away the ink for the lighter tones and highlights.

This is a detailed scratchboard drawing, essentially a map, of the Viking 2 landing site in front of the lander. The sampling field was mapped in detail by the mission team and that as well as other sources using stereo plotted placement of features were consulted along with the surface photography. This task was made simpler than that of Viking 1 by the flat nature of the surroundings with the rocks bases etc. more readily determined. This portrayal was drawn on one of several gray dot screen printed scratchboard sheets given me in the 80's by Chesley Bonestell during one of my visits to his Carmel house and studio. He said they were quite old even then.

A rapidograph technical fountain pen was used to add the inked details as dark dots and areas, and the highlights were scraped away with an X-acto knife with a #16 blade, a narrow one tapered toward one side rather than the center. The result is thus entirely defined by black and white with no gray 'continuous tone' detail. I have one pristine sheet left which I dare not touch. #Sciart

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

On September 3, 1976 Viking Lander 2 touched down on the Surface of Mars. When the lander separated from the orbiter the latter began a roll that interrupted lander data for several hours. After a wait the first panoramas arrived, showing not the dune field hoped for but an endless flat rocky plain.

This is a panorama of the Martian landscape photographed by the Viking 2 lander after touching down September 3, 1976. The first landing revealed a gently hilly scene strewn with rocks, with some large enough to wreck the lander if it had ended up on top of one. This prompted a strategy to try and find a smooth site, with a sand dune covered area ideal. The orbiter camera had a 50 meter resolution at best so the broad details and context were as important as the fine details in trying to interpret the nature of the surface along the selected latitude.
The landing site ended up being a level plain strewn with medium to large rocks, with only the tiniest dunes and some little trenches wandering among the rocks. These trenches are analogous to the 'patterned ground' of Tundra and Arctic regions as freeze-thaw cycles alter the ground. One of the footpads landed on a sizable rock and caused the lander to have a pronounced tilt, which has been roughly corrected in this panorama made from color lander photos.

I initially concentrated on the color of the scenery , then manually recolored the sky and lander to conform to what a better dynamic range camera might have recorded.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Looks like nice dark skies there. I have been trying all sky twilight sequences with the 6D, the dynamic range limitations make me want to shoot with 2 such cameras at greatly differing exposures.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Beautiful! It's great to see the inner dynamics in this iconic object revealed by the nebulae in the central region.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It's not an 'either/or thing. We can do both. And more. I remember people complaining about the Apollo program which brought to Moon within our grasp. Yes all civilizations rise and fall, meeting the challenges ours face means gaining knowledge and capabilities. Knowing of the Cosmos is worthy.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This mission will map out the entire sky in IR and some visible color in near Hubble level detail. It benefits us in the general sense that knowledge is enablement. Knowing Earth's cosmic context is rewarding scientifically and in contributing to our collective appreciation of the skies.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

My portrayal of the Partial Lunar Eclipse of August 27-28, 2026. These were painted in Photoshop based on my observations through a 10 inch telescope and binoculars. Among the variable clouds I saw just enough of the event to get the observation I wanted, a look at the colors in the Earth shadow.

My setup for these events has been similar for 40 years. I have a stack of printed Moon images on a clipboard, little lights clipped on tripods and on me, and things arranged so only modest motions are needed for me to observe through the telescope and through the binoculars to get complimentary impressions of the colors. The telescope gives a detailed survey of the color differences in various parts of the Moon, The binoculars give an overall color summary and tend to show more saturated color. One then the other are peered through, and once in a while a photo is made with my still camera nearby kept aimed at the Moon. The photos are modest but provide tonal details in the shadows that supplement the sketches with low res but objective references.
During this event I am furiously sketching atop the printed Full Moon image sheets, scribbling outlines of perceived color zones and writing color description labels. These labeled 'color by number' summaries are supplemented with sketches of the overall tonal values across the Moon, done on small printed circles provided for this purpose next to the larger printed maps. The time each sketch is made is always written next to it. All during the observing session I have a small portable shortwave radio tuned to WWV, with its eternal ticking off of the seconds and the voice of the Digital Time God. There I am alone in the night, just me and the rare event.

The nominal shadow colors were seen, with the outermost zone adjacent to the Sunlit area a neutral gray, and smaller concentric zones of subdued golden, then orange surrounding the very dark rusty brick red, 'core'. The entire color range was seen on this occasion. I then reduced my sketches and visual memory into a pictorial summary. It is vital to do the balance of such work immediately afterwards while the visual impression is fresh on ones mind. The digital paintings were done on top of a digital Full Moon photo I obtained immediately after the Eclipse ended.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I hear you, it’s looking cloudy for tonight in my area but we’ll see.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Vikings 1 and 2 photographed the Sun just peeking above the Martian horizon in 1978. This Viking 2 photo was a sunrise though.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Pictorial representations of the Pharos are rare, all of them help in adding up an idea of that iconic building's appearance. I modeled it for a show on the Seven Wonders. Here is that model superimposed on the present site now occupied by a late Medieval era fort.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

On this date, August 23 1966, The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft obtained this first view of Earth from Lunar orbit. On the left is my treatment of the the wider angle photo taken the same time as the more widely circulated high res image. Also a contemporary poster describing the photo's context.

This is Lunar Orbiter 1 frame 1102 M, for 'Moderate' resolution. The Lunar Orbiter camera system was a modified reconnaissance satellite system that used a film camera, developing the B&W film spools and scanning the negatives and converting the opaqueness detected in the precision scanning of 'rows' into data. The signals were reconstructed on Earth making large negatives whose contact prints were impressively large, roughly 20 X 30 inches.

While serving the needs of landing site investigations and map makers, the Lunar Orbiter images had issues. They were scanned on board in little strips whose tonal values did not necessarily match between adjacent 'framelet' edges, and there were sometimes repeating variations in the recorded intensity within each scanned line making up a 'framelet' which added more tonal idiosyncrasies. These were only of esthetic concern and the high quality camera system overall performed magnificently, although bad fogging of optics ruined much of Lunar Orbiter 4's systematic Lunar mapping effort and the chemical development process occasionally left defective globs on the negatives.
The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project was undertaken to rescue the original telemetry data of those Lunar images. The great majority of the Mission images were successfully recovered using a lovingly reconstructed massive high end tape reader in a leftover MacDonalds building at the fringe of Moffett Field.

Once the best such image data is available the various stages of accounting for and 'cancelling out' the known departures from what the pristine negative must have looked like can begin in earnest. This attempts to reconstruct something closer to what the original negative from the spacecraft could yield. The famous view that appeared in many magazines and books a the time is here seen in more of a context. The prominent dark lava filled crater is Tsiolkovsky, among the first farside features to be named. Earth is about to set for the spacecraft.

This is a scan of a NASA poster from 1966 giving background to the landmark first photo of Earth and the Moon from Lunar orbit by Lunar Orbiter 1 on August 23, 1966. This photo was widely circulated at the time, in horizontal presentation, and appears in NASA's classic Special Publication SP-168 'Exploring Space With a Camera'.

Lunar Orbiter was a Lunar mapping project funded in support of the Apollo Moon landing program to enable high quality maps of the Moon to be prepared, particularly of the candidate landing sites.
The camera system was modified from a spy satellite design, using dual cameras with wide and narrow angle optics capturing a detail and context image. This reproduction of the narrow angle High Resolution image 1102H shows the 'stripes' caused by uneven scanning of the negative on the spacecraft, which while doing the job of conveying the needed information also bought a distinct 'look' to most photos from that mission. Scanned from my collection.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

This photo also shows the 'Gegenschein', or 'counterglow', near the top as a condensation in the Zodiacal Light which forms a broad path of light crossing the Milky Way. It is 180 degrees from the Sun. This can only be seen in pristine dark skies, a sight taken away from 90 percent of Humanity.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I have noticed a modest brightening in twilights lately. Nothing like the great episode of 2019 which was the first one of the digital camera era. I made extensive color observations and photos of the intense enhanced twilight episodes of 1991, 1983 and 1974.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Are you seeing twilights of increased intensity lately?

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Yes indeed, they are the vermin of the skies. It is getting impossible to make clean sky surveys these days. The Reflect Orbital mirrors, if launched in great numbers, will tangibly elevate the background brightness of the skies. I am working on visualizing the night sky appearance of their beams.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

One matter I consider a major factor regarding their desirability from my present perspective is what such huge space structures would do to the night sky, they would be like Venus in brightness, not good. The proposed Reflect Orbital space mirror constellation would be worse and should be opposed.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Thanks! I found such grand schemes visually exciting, with the portrayals of hollow rotating space colonies an expression of the possibilities opening up for humanity. Those were good times for Big Dreams, and the day may one day come when humanity's space population exceeds that of Earth.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I recall later in the space settlement movement hearing about lasers vs microwave power beaming. Arbitrarily advanced tech can happen like Apollo at great cost, but of course physics are immutable and require accommodation. As an artist I regard such schemes primarily as visually exciting subjects.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Of course not launching it all from Earth is pivotal in such an idea. As for the efficiency in getting the power down, either it seems worthwhile when carefully examined or it doesn't. SSPS won't be worth thinking about until launch costs drop enough to allow space based manufacturing to happen.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I don't know of any demonstrations of satellite to ground power transmission. China is reportedly working on space based power, but we'll see. I cannot imagine SSP being practical until space based mining and manufacturing happens in Lagrange points etc. It would be an industry of Space colonies.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Sounds like another strike against that idea. The gulf between Space Based Solar Power and practicality is admittedly immense. I don't know what those numbers looked like when Peter Glaser was promoting the idea. However, Caltech has done space solar/microwave power transmission to a satellite.

This is part of an oil painting done for the cover of the book 'Doomsday has been Cancelled' by Peter J. Vajk, Peace Press 1978. The book expressed optimism at the prospects for easing the burden of an expanding technological civilization on the Earth by transitioning from the historic 'closed loop' situation.

The foreground is dominated by a Satellite Solar Power Station, from a design by Peter Glaser introduced in a 1974 feasibility study. His team envisioned a 4.3 X 11.7 km structure.

The idea of large space structures was alluring, and was often shown in Shuttle era space presentations. There was even a 'beam extruding' machine being worked on, but by the end of the 70s that idea lost NASA support.

This painting is a kind of artifact from the exuberant optimistic 1970s, when we still dared to Dream Big. It is also a kind of time capsule of visual assumptions then being made about possible futures for Earth I would now largely rebuke. As I recall the author provided guidance that the work should suggest Earth's prosperous future. I extrapolated from that showing a trend toward the 'greening' of the Sahara, with Midwest US type farmlands in evidence. And at night we see the lights of the cities where I forget how many more billions of people there were supposed to be, all with first world living standards. Satellite Solar Power Stations were seen as one means to provide the required energy with the mining and construction using extraterrestrial resources.

Another aspect of my enthusiasm for the idea was the pervasive prejudice against nuclear power as a major power source, which I then shared. In the end all sources of energy have their human cost and ratio of risk to benefit. In the end if we are going to humanely accommodate 10 billion people in a first world living standard our energy requirements will be immensely more than they are today. It's conceivable Space Solar Power may yet have it's day, for Earth and for extraterrestrial communities.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Space based Solar Power has for decades meant for me huge solar panels relaying the power to big ground antennae perhaps built over farmlands. I accept that it is far from a competitive option now, but if/when it costs less than 100 dollars /kilo to get stuff up there that will encourage options.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The Moon has a growing # of small human made craters. Besides at least 20 probes that were designed as impactors, or orbiters which were de orbited, Apollo Saturn V third stages were deliberately crashed into the Moon 4 times. Some day these will be interesting places to examine and collect scraps.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The Sunset of August 17 2026 featured a modest formation of semi lenticular clouds to the West, however they caught the very reddened last sunlight in a dramatic display. For a few magical minutes the color intensity took my thoughts into realms of numinous wonder.

The Sunset of August 17, 2026 was a fine but small show in the Western sky at Joshua Tree, California. This is a Canon Digital SLR panorama of three frames using a 55-250 zoom lens, pretty much fully zoomed in. This dramatically lit formation was thus only several degrees across along the horizon. The colors are reasonably portrayed, the vividness may have been contributed to by a little smoke somewhere in the hundreds of miles line of sight between those clouds and the Sun. The lower clouds are visibly more reddened in the filtered sunlight than the upper ones with more orange lighting. The Monsoon weather in the High Desert has largely retreated now but a return in several days is likely.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

It's a shame they had run out of color still camera film.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The Monsoon weather pattern noted earlier continues, isolated storms arising and leaving narrow water scoured paths. The Sunset of Saturday, August 15, was a nice show. To the North a grouping of Cumulus towers huddled into a surging peak with a streamlined 'cap' of ice clouds forming at the apex.

This photograph of the Sunset of August 15th, 2025 from Joshua Tree, California shows the most compelling aspect for me of this one, a nice storm far to my North. Cumulus clouds are rising as a mass and catching the subdued coppery orange filtered sunlight, the color possibly influenced by the mixing into the region of smoke from distant wildfires. The highest central mass, its summit shrouded by a cap cloud, rises high enough to reach the yellower less filtered sunlight.

These are also the kind of clouds I love to paint.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

For this Planetarium show I made a sequence showing the 50s Mars, three schemes over the years to land on Mars as our knowledge of the planet's surface changed, then we withdraw from the real Mars. At 22:10 that sequence begins. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1kO...

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Planetarium Watch Party: "Invaders of Mars":

YouTube video by Manitoba Museum

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

During the recent Total Solar Eclipse the South Korean Danuri spacecraft obtained a nice view of Earth from Lunar orbit with the Moons shadow just visible on Earth. Here is their image, with attribution added, my colorized version and the nearly simultaneous EPIC-DSCOVR image used for the color.

This is a reduced version of the photo released today by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Earth is seen from Lunar orbit during the recent Total Solar eclipse. The Moon is barely showing shadows behind the sunlit surfaces, and the shadow of the Moon itself is just at the horizon, or perhaps 'Limb' better suits an orbital view. One very wide shadow shows a fuzzy edge on a distant rise. I added the attribution.

This is my version of the Danuri Lunar orbiter photo, with color added. I combined their Earth photo with a color EPIC-DSCOVR image made at about the same time, rotated a little in 3D to better match the Danuri viewing angle for compositing. The sharpness of the B&W original is preserved with the DSCOVR full Earth photo mostly used for the color values. I also prefer this orientation with the foreground Moon at the bottom.

This is the EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) image from the DSCOVR satellite made at close to the same time as the Danuri image, shown in reduced form but otherwise as released.
The exposure is naturally for the sunlit Earth and clouds. The Moon shadow's wide peripheral zone of gradual darkening, the 'penumbra' is where the illumination decreases as more of the Sun is eclipsed. At this time the outermost shadow area was near the Great Lakes, from this perspective a circular zone of that radius thus surrounds the progressively underexposed zone around the Moon shadow. If the exposure were adjusted to define the actual umbra, or zone of totality, the resulting small black dot in the image , about 30 percent the size of the underexposed portion seen here, would be surrounded by the greatly overexposed fully sunlit rest of the world.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

As an artist I have solid alliances with your concerns. I was in a list of artists 'mined' for AI uses and I joined a case related list. As for Photoshop, that is very different. As a traditional and digital artist I found hand painting in Photoshop etc a satisfactory expression of painterly style.

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Don Davis @ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Amazing! This is like those entertainment displays where a thin laser 'plane' shows a 'thin slice' of changing smoke eddies in the dark room.

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