Andrew McCarthy

In addition to getting a ridiculous shot of Saturn as it set behind the moon- I captured some of my most detailed shots of the lunar craters!

That’s egress!! Amazing. I will have a high resolution photo of this event finished soon. If you’re not already, make sure you’re on my email list!

In 2022, I captured this fleeting moment when Mars emerged after being hidden behind the moon. Tonight, I’ll be capturing Saturn doing the same. A bucket list shot for me and one I’ve been planning for months.

So hyped for tomorrow’s event. Will be my first time capturing a Saturn Occult. This is like the astrophotography Super Bowl… all the experience and knowledge just for a shot that lasts a moment.

Update on this: it seems the consensus is that the tag is likely added due to photoshop now using AI to power many of their tools. Including the spot healing brush, which I use frequently to clean up little dust specks from my sensor. When these are used, photoshop updates the metadata of the image with an AI tag that Instagram picks up on. Not sure what the solution here is, but since photoshop is supposed to be *THE* software for professionals, this shouldn’t be happening. I don’t know if this is actually what’s happening here but it seems likely.

Sorry for sharing my drama today. No more negativity, back to space 🫡 Did you know Saturn is being occulted by the moon Tuesday morning, and I traveled the world to try and get the perfect shot? I’ll post it here right after I capture it! Here’s 5 years of my Saturn photos:

It seems it’s likely that the content-aware fill I used to clean sensor dust specks off the image may have been what tripped this. Historically this was never AI-powered, so if this permanently means anything edited with photoshop gets this label added to the image metadata then I can’t see how any professional photographer can justify using them!

In case you needed another reason to hate Instagram, they’re automatically adding “AI generated” tags to space photos. With the growing flat earth community and general institutional distrust, systems like this need to be responsibly designed. No, my work is not AI. 🧵

I’ve also been shooting these long before generative AI tools existed… but frankly there’s not a lot of similar photos out there. It’s entirely possible it’s flagged as AI just because it’s so unlike everything else.

By using 2 cameras and 2 telescopes, I can create composite images of our moon that more accurately demonstrate the feeling of watching it drift through our skies. The moon is a perfect subject for art. This is formatted as a mobile wallpaper, enjoy! Still posting them daily.

By setting up a telescope in exactly the right point on Earth and using an extremely fast shutter speed, I can capture the ISS against a specific backdrop. In this case, the Apollo 11 landing site. This is cropped as a phone wallpaper for you. Enjoy! I’ll…

By setting up a telescope in exactly the right point on Earth and using an extremely fast shutter speed, I can capture the ISS against a specific backdrop. In this case, the Apollo 11 landing site. This is cropped as a phone wallpaper for you. Enjoy! I’ll post another tomorrow.