March 1, 2008
The cosmos is full of spectacular things: ringed planets, exploding suns, rivers of stars across the night.
Mauna Kea Shadow Play
Birthday · March 1, 2008
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APOD published March 1, 2008. Credit: Alex Mukensnable. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Just opposite the setting Sun, the already-eclipsed Moon rose over the Hawaiian Islands on February 20. A view near the 14,000 foot peak of volcanic Mauna Kea on the Big Island, a popular spot for astronomers, offered this remarkable play of shadows and sunlight. With snowy cinder cones in the foreground, the Moon lies within the shadow cast by the mountain -- a shadow extending across a lower cloud deck and on through Earth's dense atmosphere. As the lunar eclipse is drawing to a close, the curved shadow of the limb of planet Earth itself can also be traced across the Moon's surface, some 400,000 kilometers away.
Image credit: Alex Mukensnable