From the EXIF we can infer that every setting was left at the default. No exposure comp, no contrast, no HSL, no lens correction and a linear tone curve. Just the default Adobe Color profile at 5400K.

The photograph appears to show nightime on Earth with just a sliver of daytime. Beyond cities in Iberia and along the coast of Africa, most of what we can see would be reflected light from the Moon? We are just past full moon on April 1.

Maybe it’s because I (like many) have experienced taking pictures at night and seeing the grainy result that _this_ image struck me as incredibly realistic.

Almost like I ran the grainy-to-real conversion in my mind and I felt like I was imagining seeing this in person. Beautiful image!

Might I ask, what was your path to finding this image?

But that one (art002e000193~large.jpg) is only 287kB. The Lightroom-processed one is 6.2MB. I would expect original to be heavier.

It's beautiful as these all are, that one is probably my favorite. And as somebody else said it kind of feels more real seeing the grain like that. It's just beautiful. A side we never see quite like this.