On April 10, 2026, the world excitedly watched as NASA’s Artemis II crew safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 7:07 p.m. CDT after a record-breaking trip around the Moon.
In total, the crew traveled 694,481 miles in nine days, a trip that also took them about 4,100 miles farther from Earth than the previous record distance for human flight held by the Apollo 13 crew nearly 46 years earlier to the day.
About 15 hours before splashdown, Dyer Observatory’s remotely controlled 16″ telescope was also watching Artemis II. At the time, the capsule was still 90,000 miles away and appeared as faint star of approximately 10th magnitude (about 40 times fainter than what the human eye can typically see under very dark skies) gradually moving through the starry backdrop of Scorpius.
The featured animation above is composed of 22 2-minute exposures in which Artemis II appears as a small streak moving toward the bottom-left of the frame. At the time, the vehicle was traveling about 4,000 miles per hour, traversing around 130 miles during each exposure.
Over the course of the exposures, light cloud cover illuminated by city lights and the rising Moon moved through, obscuring the field of view. A few frames were also photobombed by Earth-orbiting satellites, resulting in long streaks in individual frames.
Despite these disturbances, we were thrilled to be able to capture the Artemis II coming home. As far as we know, this is the first time a Dyer Observatory telescope has imaged something outside of Earth with life!
Welcome home, Artemis II!