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Birthday · July 5, 2018

Shadow Rise on the Inside Passage

July 5, 2018

The Earth has carried you around the Sun again, steady as ever, while the stars kept their patient watch.

Shadow Rise on the Inside Passage

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APOD published July 5, 2018. Credit: Steve Cullen. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

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Shadow Rise on the Inside Passage

Original APOD · July 5, 2018

At sunset look east not west. As Earth's dark shadow rises from the eastern horizon, faint and subtle colors will appear opposite the setting Sun. This beautiful evening sea and skyscape records the reflective scene from a cruise on the well-traveled Alaskan Inside Passage in the Pacific Northwest. Along the horizon the fading sunset gives way to the pinkish anti-twilight arch, more poetically known as the Belt of Venus. Often overlooked at sunset in favor of the brighter western horizon, the lovely arch is tinted by filtered sunlight backscattered in the dense atmosphere, hugging the planet's rising blue-grey shadow.

Image credit: Steve Cullen

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