Photos of a colorful Moon are going viral online. Is it really like that?
Photos of the Moon, where Earth's satellite shines in various colors like a diamond, have spread across the internet. Some go even further and say that these photos were taken by astronauts from 'Artemis-2'.
Photo: _ibatullin_ildar_ / Instagram
Images of a colorful Moon have gone viral online. They are being discussed on social media as if it's a new discovery. Here's what Threads users are writing:
«Have you seen this beauty? It turns out the Moon is colorful!»
«For hundreds of years, people thought it was just a grey sphere in the sky. But it turned out to be colorful!»
«Even the Moon is colorful, but panel buildings in Belarus are still just as grey».
Some users attribute these photos to astronauts from 'Orion'.
First of all, these images have nothing to do with 'Artemis-2', and you will not find them on any of the resources where NASA publishes photos from 'Orion'. However, both these photos and many other similar images are available on the page of Ildar Ibatullin, a photographer from Kyiv. Ildar posted these very viral images on Instagram in August 2025.
Below his posts, Ildar explains how he gets such photos:
«During processing, I deliberately enhanced the brightness of the Moon to show the mineral composition of its surface. Orange hues indicate iron-bearing minerals, while blue hues correspond to titanium-rich regions on the surface».
Simply put, the Moon has mineral deposits, and their colors actually differ slightly from the grey color of the lunar surface. However, that difference is so small that it is very difficult to see with the naked eye. Therefore, to take bright photos of the Moon, Ibatullin has to amplify the faint colors of its surface to the maximum.
The real Moon, to the human eye, appears grey — just as it was captured by astronauts from 'Artemis-2':
Photo: NASA
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