Viral Image Claims James Webb Space Telescope Photo of Eclipse Shown. Here’s What We Found

Demand:

A real photo captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse.

Rating:

Context:

The real photo [pictured above] it was not captured by JWST, and it was not taken in 2024. The image that went viral is a digital drawing that accurately recreates the photo.

Actress Annie Dillard once wrote on a solar eclipse that “what you see in an eclipse is completely different from what you know.” Maybe that’s why the best part of total solar eclipses is looking at some of the amazing photos circulating on social media.

After the eclipse that came across North America on April 8, 2024, posts on X (formerly Twitter) went viral, claiming that NASA’s own James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) had the best pic.

(X user @avenaim)

Snopes investigated the origin of the photo at the request of readers. We found a photo that closely resembled the one posted online – it’s the photo used in our header image. However, NASA’s JWST did not take that photo, nor did it capture the 2024 solar eclipse. A reader informed us that the exact image was a recreation of the same photo we found created by an artist named Cathrin Machin the post went viral. Here’s what we found:

First, we investigated social media profiles from NASA and JWST – we thought the scientists and astronomers who took the photo would be proud to capture the telescope and post about it.

Instead, we found posts from the official JWST X account explaining that the Webb telescope cannot look at the sun, as it was designed to detect and see much weaker signals. JWST was designed with a solar shield specifically to prevent sunlight from interfering with the instruments. This means that Webb could never have taken the image.

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Next, we ran the image through reverse image search engines like TinEye and Google Lens, which gave us mixed results. While TinEye found no matches, Google Lens came up with several, and we noticed many of them were posted before the April 8 eclipse. So, in addition to not being from JWST, the image is not of the North American 2024. eclipse photo.

It actually shows a solar eclipse in North America – just the one that happened on August 21, 2017. Several of the links provided by a Google Lens search credited the image to Dr. Sebastian Voltmer, filmmaker and astrophotographer.

By looking at Voltmer’s social media, we confirmed that he took the original photo, with the best version of the photo coming from his Flickr page. According to the details provided in the Flickr caption, Voltmer captured the image through a telescope in Wyoming using a photography technique called HDR, which combines several different images taken at different exposure lengths to capture details in images with contrast high light/dark. When Voltmer posted the photo to the social mediarotated it 90 degrees to fit a vertical aspect ratio.

In 2020, Australian artist Cathrin Machin took Voltmer’s image on social media and recreated it in detail over 10 days. Comparing Machin’s version, posted on his Instagram page, to the versions that went viral after the 2024 eclipse, the colors came together cleanly. We suspect that Machin’s image has been mirrored and filtered, which may be why we haven’t found it using reverse lookup sites like TinEye.

So, no, the image in question was not captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. However, don’t think of it as a disrespect for JWST’s limitations – instead, think of it more as a credit to the telescope, which has changed our perception of astronomical imaging since its launch, astrophotographers like Voltmer , which he succeeded. take a great photo from the surface of the Earth, and talented artists like Machin add even more to the top.

Sources:

“ABOUT.” Website by Dr. Sebastian Voltmer14 July 2011, https://voltmer.de/about/.

Cole, Margherita. “Artist Spends 10 Days Recreating Spectacular View of Solar Eclipse.” My Modern Met1 February 2021, https://mymodernmet.com/cathrin-machin-solar-eclipse-digital-painting/.

Google Lens. https://lens.google.com/search?ep=gsbubb&hl=en&re=df&p=abrfa8pdj-eltdBofywoyp FBZ6KEND01ZC85CUNVP2HZ7JWN_OW7639FPB_ULEOKFOVO4TSK08XVB9ZDZBEHF0E1jne LJLXF5FX5QVU31NPZVTZSPU69GJMHUMMJMQKUR3Q0_R0LZ4G%3d 3D#LNS = de5eqxloqzfot0daakxuwtnorekztlrgaestjnuklmt0hsa1frmdbosfjzvdnkagewadrir3bs t0hjemvebsmwc0tnpkqpsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvsbnvixsbnvixsbnvixsbnvixsbnvixixixi -vixixixixix Xsxbimuwn2nlywfilti4ytutndjimy04yjdiltlizti3mjiymtezmyjdxsxudwxslg51bgwsbnvsbcxbbnvsbcxudwxslftdxv0 =. Accessed 9 April 2024.

“Https://Twitter.Com/Avenaim/Status/1777442521209282862/Photo/1.” X (formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/avenaim/status/1777442521209282862/photo/1 . Accessed 9 April 2024.

“https://Twitter.Com/NASAWebb/Status/1775629331357642755.” X (formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1775629331357642755. Accessed 9 April 2024.

“https://Twitter.Com/SeVoSpace/Status/1776736821617319995.” X (formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/SeVoSpace/status/1776736821617319995 . Accessed 9 April 2024.

Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C5b41osy-C2/?hl=en. Accessed 9 April 2024.

Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CC3S10SgYoc/?img_index=1 . Accessed 11 April 2024.

The Sunshield Webb/NASA. https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/sunshield.html. Accessed 9 April 2024.

TinEye Reverse Image Search. https://tinye.com/search/ea998d3f04d504ce8c8ace8ca9be5800e321d6e0?sort=score&order=desc&page=1. Accessed 9 April 2024.

Voltmer, Sebastian. World Crown 2017. photo, 6 September 2017. Flickrhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/spacemovie/36659081780/.