For anyone questioning the point of NASA’s Artemis II lunar flyby, we finally have an answer. With the incredible moon photos from Artemis II handing Apple iPhone ad ops, people have been revisiting previous lunar imagery, and they’ve made a startling discovery.
We’re all familiar with the ‘man in the moon’ formed by the dark volcanic plains on the lunar surface, but does the image below show Mario on moon? Nintendo fans were outraged when Mario’s glutes were nerfed for the Super Mario Bros movie. Now it seems he’s got his booty back.
o mário treinou glúteos pic.twitter.com/fP3yni9d4HApril 7, 2026
The colourful image of the moon has suddenly gone viral in recent days, with many posts on social media falsely attributing it to NASA’s Artemis II.
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Once you’ve seen it, it becomes impossible to unsee the image of Mario shaking his stuff towards the right side of the image. The White House’s use of Mario to celebrate the launch of Artemis II suddenly makes sense!
So has Nintendo come up with an elaborate way to plug The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which hit cinemas last week? Alas, no.
The viral photo was actually taken from Earth in August of last year by the Ukrainian photographer Ildar Ibatullin, who says he used a Sony a7s ii with a GSO 150/750 telescope, an Arsenal EQ5 mount and Barlow 2x lens. Those aren’t the moon’s natural colours. Ildar used Photoshop to increase the saturation with the aim of indicating the mineral composition of moon’s surface.
NASA itself has used false colour images of the moon for decades to interpret surface soil composition. As it explains in this blog post from 2018, it makes its colourful moon images by stacking multiple photos taken with different filters in order to distinguish the lunar highlands and the ancient volcanic lava flows of the different lunar seas, known as mares.
The image circulating on social media this week is a kind of optical illusion known as a pareidolic image. The phenomenon occurs because of our tendency to impose a meaningful interpretation on objects and patterns even when there is none.
What looks like Mario’s body is actually the Mare Tranquillitatis, with the bluer colour representing the presence of more titanium. The red area that looks like the back of his hat is the Mare Serenitatis. Writing on Instagram, Ildar says the redder hues in his image indicate iron oxide.
According to NASA, the blue and orange areas on the left side of the image would represent separate lava flows in Oceanus Procellarum and the smaller purple areas near the center pyroclastic deposits formed by volcanic eruptions.
The Artemis II mission has clearly reignited interest in our nearest celestial neighbour, leading people to only discover this optical illusion now. Sadly, you’re unlikely to spot Mario’s booty if you look up at the sky tonight.
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