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Comment by cogogo | Hacker News Reader

Are the bright spots to the lower right in this photo galaxies or just camera artifacts[0]? Unreal photo either way.

[0]https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e00...

They said they were able to see a few planets during the eclipse. I know they definitely saw Mars as they were discussing the red color. They saw Venus which was visible in the live feed from the GoPro on the solar panel. IIRC, they were thinking Saturn would have been visible. My guess is the really bright dots are planets. It looks like some horrendous compression artifacts along with some possible lens distortion. My exif app says no exif data in the jpg you linked. Did you come to that image from their website that provides the EXIF to see what lens it was? Nothing looks like a galaxy in the image to me.

Edit: After further looking and some zooming into it, I'd say the bright dot closest to the moon is Venus, the next one has a red tint making it Mars, and then the last one would be Saturn with the rings. There might be a couple of galaxies in the upper left corner. I was quick to dismiss and blame on compression. The benefits of not having to shoot through atmosphere. I wouldn't have expected that detail in what I'm assuming to be a fairly fast exposure

Appreciate the detailed response. I think it would be a borderline miraculous photo if they are planets aligned in that way. Zooming they look more like artifacts or galaxies to me. I spend a good amount of time looking at planets from earth through binoculars and even with an atmosphere they resolve better than that.

I'm pretty sure I'm right about the planets. The planets are aligned that way. If you're experienced looking at them with binocs, you should be aware of that. The line the planets are on is known as the ecliptic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic

Also, if you look at the famous family portrait, you'll see they're in a pretty straight line as well

https://science.nasa.gov/resource/first-ever-solar-system-fa...

You are right. I do think it is miraculous that the trajectory happened to bring the capsule into a solar eclipse and Mercury, Mars and Saturn are positioned in this way. This site helped me understand the current/past positioning[0]. Even though there is no reason the photo has to be oriented with the planets to the right. I am still surprised at how blurry they look when zooming given what I see from Earth with binoculars. I guess they are magnifying considerably more than this lens.

In retrospect it was pretty silly to think they could have been galaxies.

[0] https://www.theplanetstoday.com/

I think we're seeing issues of refraction from shooting through the windows of the capsule. That's causing the glowing or blooming effect from the point light sources. What I thought were possible galaxies look more like distorted stars from the refraction. I finally found a higher resolution image. All of the brighter point sources have that diffraction. It looks like some trailing of the stars as well.

That link is a nice visualizer. On the day of, the live cast announcer stated we were seeing Venus in the feed from the GoPro. But that seems incorrect, and it looks more likely to be Mercury.

There is EXIF available in the original version: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009301/art002e00...

It's taken with an AF Nikkor 35mm f/2D on a NIKON Z 9.

From left to right: Saturn, Mars and Mercury.

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