Real or AI?Can you spot the AI night-sky photo?

You get six rounds. Each shows two photographs of the night sky, such as the Milky Way over a hill, an aurora over winter trees, or the Moon. One is a real photograph and one was generated by AI. Tap the one you think is AI, see which was which, read what gave it away, and get a score you can share. The quiz uses landscape stills and one official NASA moon photograph. It does not show people, and it does not use the viral photographs described in the news cited on this page.

They are public-domain or CC0 photographs from Wikimedia Commons, listed with the photographer or agency and licence in the image credits table on this page. One still is an official NASA public-domain photograph of the Moon, credited as official, not as a hoax image. The AI images were generated by TimeBinder for this quiz from text descriptions of similar night-sky scenes, not as copies of the real photographs and not as copies of viral hoax images. No real person appears in any image.

On 4 November 2026, The Guardian (Eva Corlett) reported that a night-sky photograph by Brendan Larsen, stacked from 578 eight-second shots over Mount Taranaki, had been accused of being AI. The Guardian’s byline is 3 November 2026, 19.29 EST (4 November 2026, 10:29 Australia/Brisbane), and the article was last modified on 11 November 2026. The Guardian reports the image as “now viewed millions of times online” and also reports “tens of millions of views” and “15,000 new followers”; those figures are the outlet’s and the subject’s, not counts we made ourselves. His photograph is not used in this quiz. Individual X posts we read about that story were mostly modest; the largest clearly on-topic first-page post, by @terrinakamura on 11 November 2026 at 03:09 Australia/Brisbane, had 1,792 impressions, 73 likes, 16 reposts, 14 replies and 5 bookmarks when we read it on 12 November 2026 — public_metrics at query time, not a complete conversation count. Autocomplete on 12 November 2026 offered “ai moon photo”, “ai satellite photo”, “ai space images” and “fake nasa photos”. Earlier Artemis II AI moon and earthrise hoax coverage, from April 2026, is older than 30 days and is dated honestly if mentioned; this quiz does not use those hoax images. This quiz is a visual practice test. It cannot tell you whether a night-sky photograph you were sent is AI-made. Official space agencies remain the place to check a scientific claim.

Often not. A close official view of the lunar surface can be a real NASA photograph, and a vivid purple Milky Way over a still lake can be generated. Clues such as candy-purple colour, a perfect reflection or a famous-looking arch silhouette help on a still image, but they are hints, not proof, and they fade once a photo is cropped, filtered or re-shared.

No. TimeBinder is not a tool for identifying generated media, and it cannot tell you whether AI made a file. A TimeBind shows that an exact file existed no later than a recorded time and that a copy you hold still matches it. That is useful when you can say “here is this file, recorded by this time,” not when you need to know how the picture was made.

Your score is worked out in your browser. This page sends a few anonymous events to our analytics, such as the quiz being finished with a score band, never your name or email.

Keep the original file unedited, and make a TimeBind of it when you take or finish it. Later, a copy that still matches the fingerprint is the same file, and the record shows it existed no later than the recorded time. It does not show who took the photo, that the sky looked like that on a given night, or who holds the copyright. Read how to prove a photo is not AI for the honest limits.