AI & Astronomy Imagery Exhibit

A Hazy Harvest Moon

Astronomy Picture of the Day: September 20, 2024

See APOD explanation. — Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava

APOD Explanation: For northern hemisphere dwellers, September's Full Moon was the Harvest Moon. On September 17/18 the sunlit lunar nearside passed into shadow, just grazing Earth's umbra, the planet's dark, central shadow cone, in a partial lunar eclipse. Over the two and a half hours before dawn a camera fixed to a tripod was used to record this series of exposures as the eclipsed Harvest Moon set behind Spiš Castle in the hazy morning sky over eastern Slovakia. Famed in festival, story, and song, Harvest Moon is just the traditional name of the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox. According to lore the name is a fitting one. Despite the diminishing daylight hours as the growing season drew to a close, farmers could harvest crops by the light of a full moon shining on from dusk to dawn. This September's Harvest Moon was also known to some as a supermoon, a term becoming a traditional name for a full moon near perigee.

AI Interpretations

AI Generated Description

This stunning photograph captures a time-lapse of the moon traversing the night sky as it transitions through its various phases during a lunar eclipse. The colorful sequence of lunar phases stretches across the upper part of the image, beginning with a bright full moon and gradually shifting to richer orange and red hues, representing different stages of the eclipse. Below this celestial display, a misty landscape features a silhouette of a castle perched on a hill, creating an enchanting contrast against the gradient blue sky. The foreground includes softly illuminated trees and fields, shrouded in fog, enhancing the tranquil atmosphere. This image beautifully intertwines the wonders of astronomy with the serene beauty of nature, showcasing the moon's majestic journey across the night sky.

AI Generated Images

An average sized full moon is in the sky over a castle. The castle is at the top of a hill covered in trees. Two much smaller moons at different crescent phases are situated in the sky as well. The pale moon contrasts against a twilight sky.

AI Generated with Juggernaut XL V9

A surreal landscape features three very large moons arranged randomly in the sky, 1 small moon, and 3 very tiny moons scattered across a light blue sky above a golden field and two distant castles. The image looks almost like a painting.

AI Generated with OpenJourney v4

Two moons peek from behind layered dark clouds. The sky immediatly behind the clouds is red, as if at sunset, however the sky above the clouds sharply changes to a light blue-purple. The layered clouds look repetative. A large moon hangs in the top right corner, with yet another small moon in the upper left. Repetative trees fill the bottom of the image.

AI Generated with OpenJourney v4

A large full moon hovers above a castle, framed by a large tree. A smaller moon is visible in the sky above the tree branch, and a very tiny moon to the left of the larger moon. The sky is a pastel purple and blue, and a green field fills the lower landscape, looking like a painting.

AI Generated with SD PhotoReal Photo V2

A massive full moon hovers prominently above a row of bare trees in a twilight setting. The moon glows bright, with detailed craters visible. A very small moon, looking like a bubble hangs above the massive moon. Two extremely tiny moons are in the sky as well.

AI Generated with SD PhotoReal Photo V2

Two pale moons overlap in the sky above a green hillside covered in trees. The sky is a soft blue-gray. A very tiny moon is barely visible in the sky.

AI Generated with Stable Diffusion v1.4

Discussion

The AI generated description from ChatGPT is able to understand from just the image that it is a time-lapse photo of the moon, a composite of many separate photos. Though it focuses on flowery language it writes about the phases of the eclipse in general terms (twice!) instead of trying to correctly describe the fact that it is only a partial eclipse. Most of the description is devoted to the castle, the fog, the hill, and the trees.

When providing the written explanation to Invoke, some AI image generators are able to understand that the moon is the focus leaving the castle out of the picture entirely. However in all cases, the image generating models are uncertain how to portray the multiple exposures, and end up adding multiple moons into the sky in a way that could never be duplicated by an astrophotographer trying to capture the reality of a lunar eclipse. Perhaps the strangest image from this set is one from OpenJourney that shows a version of the Moon both behind and in front of clouds, a physical impossibility.