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The Light of a Man-Made Star

The Atlantic

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August 2025

In 2003, the photographer Michael Light published 100 Suns, a collection of government photographs of nuclear-weapons tests conducted from 1945 to 1962.

The Light of a Man-Made Star

Each bomb test was given an innocuous name—Sugar, Easy, Zucchini, Orange—and then detonated in the desert or ocean. The Army Signal Corps and a detachment of Air Force photographers, working out of a secret base in Hollywood, photographed the tests.

imageThe Priscilla test, June 24, 1957, Nevada

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