LLM image analysis

At first, I couldn't figure out what landmass was shown in this photo of the Earth from Artemis II, and what orientation it was in:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/

Some LLMs out there are multi-modal, able to take images as input. I thought they might be able to analyze the photo, comparing it against known coastlines, to figure it out. So I asked a few, "In the image on this page, what landmass is shown in the image of Earth?" along with the URL.

Mistral indicated Greenland. It said it was reasonably confident and mentioned the landmass being a "large, white, icy region", which indicated to me it didn't actually "look" at the photo.

Google Gemini indicated it was "the dark side of the Earth", again indicating it didn't actually analyze the photo.

Microsoft Copilot gave a much better answer, mentioning details that were really in the photo. It thought it was Australia, which was my first guess too. But the lower left part showing city lights didn't seem to match Australia's shape; the "island" was too close to the mainland to be Tasmania.
I finally figured out that the North pole is towards the bottom of the image, the large landmass is northwest Africa, the lit-up part is Spain and Gibraltar, and South America is on the right side.
When I asked Copilot to guess again, it rightly said Africa, but a different part of it. On the third try, it got it correct.

Artemis II mission

Now that my taxes are done, I'm finally able to feel some real excitement about this.


NASA's Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast) (YouTube)

Artemis II tracker (NASA) - lets you display the trajectory of the spacecraft in relation to the Earth and Moon. As of right now the moon isn't even yet within the loop part of the craft's projected trajectory; the moon's orbit will take it into the loop part within the next few hours, I am sure. It also shows some stats (distance from earth & moon, velocity). There's also an app - More Info.