I refuse to believe this image of the eclipse is real, as much as I wish it were. Not that it couldn't be real. It can. I've seen plenty of photos of eclipses taken from space, but this one is just too awesome to be real.


Update: Indeed, it wasn't real, but it isn't a Photoshop. It's a 3D rendering made in Terragen 2 by DevianArt user ~A4size-ska. It took 38 hours to render. The image of the Milky Way was added later in Photoshop. You can get the high resolution original here. It's beautiful anyway. Check out the real image of the Moon shadow, taken by Don Pettit, at the end of this article.


I've spent the last two hours trying to find the original source after receiving this pointer. I wasn't successful. It may be a combination of a real shot of an anular eclipse and another real shot of the shadow of the moon over Earth during another eclipse. Or maybe some nutter fired up a weather balloon with a camera and got lucky.

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So I will ask you oh space junkies of the world, expert Redditors at /r/space, dear bad astronomers: what do you think? Is this real? [Thanks Nick!]

Extra bonus: Some impressive images that we know are real.


Demon eclipse. [Twitpic]


Astroproposal. [Mlkshk]




Solar eclipse on hand. [Mlkshk]




The real Moon shadow during Sunday's eclipse, taken by Don Pettit at the ISS.