When a photograph goes “viral” it often leaves its photographer far behind. That’s what happened to Chris Pegman, whose cool composite of a recent supermoon sitting cozy inside a radio telescope at the Warkworth Observatory hit the front page of Reddit and received well over 2 million views on Imgur!

The only problem: it was a crop without any credit for the photographer himself…

Here is the composite image as uploaded to 500px:

Supermoon by Chris Pegman on 500px.com

And here is what showed up on Imgur:

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Not a smidgeon of credit was given to the photographer. With over 5000 upvotes on Reddit, the majority of the comments weren’t about who took the shot, or where to find the original, but whether or not it was a composite.

Speaking to the NZ Herald, Chris explained that he was just having a bit of fun. “I didn’t realise the gem I’d created,” he told them. Or the headache really…

As the Herald writes:

Mr Pegman was delighted it had proved so popular, and is now “chasing his tail” trying to attach his name to an image that was continuing to multiply across the internet.

Hopefully this article helps a tiny bit with that last part… but lesson learned: it can be great to have a photo go viral, but only if it takes your credit line with it. To see more from Chris, check him out on 500px, visit his website, or say hi on Facebook.