Astrophotography
Astrophotography
[Cueball and Megan stand on a hill with the dark yellow sun setting behind them. Outside the Sun's disc everything is black. All that can be seen is silhouettes against the sun. Cueball is at the top-left of the hill, holding a bow in his left arm, which has been recently shot, as indicated with lines along the string. The the arrow is to right, where it has speared a ball. Megan is at the bottom-right of the hill, juggling four other balls, one near her hand, two above her and one higher up than the path of the arrow. There are two planes going in opposite directions with banners on them with words readable against the Sun. Above the planes is the shadow of the International Space Station. Finally Sun is partially eclipsed by the moon in the upper right corner.] [Banner 1]: Nice [Banner 2]: Shot
[Caption beneath the panel]: Our astrophotography community's one-upsmanship[sic] is getting out of hand.

Astrophotography is the practice of taking pictures of astronomical objects.  Sometimes it is specified as a hobby, as opposed to the work of professional astronomers.  Astrophotographers like to take pretty pictures of all sorts of objects in the sky, but photographing the Sun is a popular subgenre within the field, especially if something is transiting in front of it.  Typical things include planes, the International Space Station (ISS), and the Moon ( Solar eclipses ).
During the Total Solar Eclipse 2017 visible across US it was possible to see the ISS pass in front of the Sun during a partial part of the Eclipse (from a site that was later in the total Eclipse zone.) This was photographed and filmed by Destin from Smarter Every Day and can be seen in his video Space Station Transiting 2017 ECLIPSE . (Go to the time of the flyby of the ISS in the video here ).
Two years later he did another episode South American Eclipse - Argentina . In this video there was only the moon eclipsing the sun, at first, but then towards the end the sun begins to set behind the distant mountains creating a shadow scenario between Moon and mountain shadows as displayed in this comic.
This comic thus combines those two videos, which Randall must have seen, and then adds several more layers caused by the Astrophotography community's One-Upmanship. The practice of "one-upmanship" refers to the practice of achieving something superior to what another has achieved, or "getting one up on" them. The term originated in the 1950s or earlier.
The caption claims that the photo shown in the comic is the result of a continuous string of one-upmanship among astrophotographers in a community, each striving to one-up the other.
In this comic there seems to be an abundance of things:
Taking the picture required precisely scheduling and arranging the relative positions of several of the various subjects (and photographer) to coincide with the predictable but rare conjunctions of the rest of the scene, as well as special equipment:
The title text describes a similarly outlandish photo attempting to one-up Cueball and Megan, done simultaneously on the next hill over, thus a place where the same ISS transit can be seen:
[Cueball and Megan stand on a hill with the dark yellow sun setting behind them. Outside the Sun's disc everything is black. All that can be seen is silhouettes against the sun. Cueball is at the top-left of the hill, holding a bow in his left arm, which has been recently shot, as indicated with lines along the string. The the arrow is to right, where it has speared a ball. Megan is at the bottom-right of the hill, juggling four other balls, one near her hand, two above her and one higher up than the path of the arrow. There are two planes going in opposite directions with banners on them with words readable against the Sun. Above the planes is the shadow of the International Space Station. Finally Sun is partially eclipsed by the moon in the upper right corner.] [Banner 1]: Nice [Banner 2]: Shot
[Caption beneath the panel]: Our astrophotography community's one-upsmanship[sic] is getting out of hand.
