Artemis II's Earth photos taken with a 10-year-old Nikon DSLR – not an iPhone

If you've been following the Artemis II story – the NASA-launched mission, which embarked on a lunar flyby mission in the Orion spacecraft – then you've probably seen some of the images that the crew took.

If not, then behold: the shot of Earth, above, was taken by Artemis II Commander, Reid Wiseman, through the Orion craft's window, once the trans-lunar injection burn was completed.

It's not an ad-hoc shot taken on his iPhone, though, as Wisemen and the Orion crew, had access to Nikon D5 DSLRs. Cameras launched over 10 years ago – and discontinued more than five years back – but which still made the cut for the most important of documentation missions.

The above image, titled 'Hello, Earth', shows two auroras to the top right and bottom left, plus zodiacal light that's visible to the bottom right, as the Earth was eclipsing the Sun at the time the photography was taken.

Not only is it beautifully detailed, it's also the full uncropped image – all 20.8-million pixels (5568 x 3712 is what the Nikon D5 shoots natively) – direct from the full-frame 'FX' sensor, with no alterations made.

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The Nikon D5 was released at the beginning of 2016, quickly becoming many professionals' tool of choice for a variety of reasons. It wasn't running the resolution race like some other options, opting instead for speed and high sensitivity as priority.

Even today, that remains a big part of the reason why the D5 has stood the test of time. A number of shots in the NASA 'Artemis II: Journey to the Moon' gallery (a selection of which are in the above gallery) had little light available and had to be shot at high sensitivity – even up to ISO 51,200.

If you're unfamiliar with camera terminology, then the ISO sensitivity is the scale for measuring a camera sensor’s sensitivity to light. A high ISO means you can expose a shot where less light is available – such is typical in space, hundreds of thousands of miles from the Earth's surface.

Problem is, high ISO shots typically produce increased 'image noise', which presents as grains that diminish the quality of a shot. The Nikon D5, however, was always a champion when it came to keeping this low – the benefit of a large sensor with relatively moderate resolution, paired with engineering know-how and top-tier processing.

In addition to the raft of Nikon D5 cameras on board, one Nikon Z9 – that being the brand's pro-grade mirrorless camera; in essence the D5 DSLR's replacement – was also loaded, to explore next-gen kit for future mission viability.

While the best camera is the one that's on you – which so often these days is the phone in your pocket – in the case of the Artemis II mission, it's a good job those cameras were tried-and-tested pro DSLRs from Nikon. Proving that even last-gen technology can still cut it.