When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Just weeks before the first Artemis 2 launch window, astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy had a last-minute idea: What if he could get the Artemis 2 astronauts to shoot the moon the same way he shoots the moon?So McCarthy slid into the DMs (direct messages) of Artemis 2 commander and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman. He knew getting a response at such a late date was a long shot, but he couldn’t pass up the chance for a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration. And the long shot came through.AdvertisementAdvertisement”He was immediately onboard,” McCarthy told Space.com in an interview. “It was a dream come true, obviously, for me, but I saw it as this very unique opportunity.”NASA’s Artemis 2 mission launched on April 1, flying four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the far side of the moon that captivated people across the world. The astronauts snapped breathtaking photos of the moon, which showed beautifully haunting views of the lunar far side that Artemis 2 crew member Christina Koch of NASA described as “the most ominous thing I’ve ever loved.”On Earth, McCarthy combines hundreds to thousands of photos of the moon to bring out details you can’t see in a single image. The results are colorful landscapes that look more like paintings than the gray orb we’re used to seeing hang in the night sky, but the diversity he presents in his images come down to lunar spectroscopy rather than artistic interpretation.”It’s very true life in a sense that everything you’re seeing is real features on the surface that your eyes just simply don’t have the color sensitivity to make out on their own,” McCarthy said. He explained that his approach to astrophotography is all about showing you the things your eyes can’t see.AdvertisementAdvertisement”I don’t want to show you something the way your eyes see it. I want to show you something as if you had superhuman vision … I want to show you the moon as if you had cyborg eyes, because your cyborg eyes can actually pick out the color differences,” McCarthy said. “The camera becomes cyborg eyes for our vision.””The color is naturally there, just much more subtle to your eyes,” he added. Some color differences on the moon are possible to see with your eyes, using binoculars or a telescope, and there are ways to trick your eyes into noticing more of the contrast than you realize.A single frame of the moon, Artemis 2 photo ART002-E-9680. | Credit: NASA”If you take a normal photo of the moon with a DSLR and just completely desaturate it, you can tell the difference,” McCarthy explained. “When you return it to regular saturation, it suddenly seems a little more colorful.”For his collaboration with Wiseman, McCarthy wanted to see if he could get the same colorful results with a camera from the lunar far side.AdvertisementAdvertisement”Usually you can’t get very high-fidelity color data from the far side of the moon,” McCarthy said. “We’ve got LRO [NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter], which has some color data, but … it’s too low fidelity to do the kind of saturation pumps that show the really granular geological differences in the regolith.”McCarthy outlined a plan with Wiseman and NASA’s lunar photography te …
