Yesterday the world experienced a beautiful annular solar eclipse that was witnessed briefly by those of us in the Eastern United States. The Internet was immediately flooded with thousands of beautiful dramatic photos of the eclipse. Unfortunately, the one that seems to have garnered the most attention was not even a photograph at all:
This stuning piece was created by an artist who goes by the name A4size-ska on DeviantArt.com. It’s beautiful, but unfortunately there are some folks out there who took this image and passed it off as an actual photograph of yesterday’s eclipse as seen from the International Space Station. Sadly, this isn’t the first time this has happened and probably won’t be the last.
This is in no way meant to detract from A4size-ska’s amazing work. I do feel bad for him though as it’s pretty clear he’s not behind the attempts at fooling the public.
Now, if you want to see an example of what it really looked like from Earth, my friend Mark Kochte snapped this beautiful image of the partially eclipsed rising Sun from the Chesapeake Bay:
The universe is a beautiful and amazing place, and worth appreciating in both fantasy and in reality. But it’s important to know which is which.