Reconstructing an Artemis II Solar Eclipse with SunPy

In a new post on the SunPy blog, we work through the reconstruction of the solar eclipse observed by the Artemis II crew on 7 April 2026, starting from a single photograph taken from the Orion spacecraft.

Using SunPy together with JPL Horizons, we retrieve the Artemis II trajectory, fit the lunar limb and the planets visible in the frame to solve for the camera orientation and lens distortion, and build a coordinate-aware SunPy Map tied to the astronaut’s viewpoint. We then reproject SOHO/LASCO C2 and C3 coronagraph data into the same frame, allowing a direct comparison of the corona from two very different vantage points.

The full write-up, along with the corresponding gallery examples, is available here: https://sunpy.org/posts/2026/artemis_2_eclipse/

With the total solar eclipse crossing Europe on 12 August 2026, the same approach can be applied to observations taken by the community.