May 9, 2023
The story of your birthday began billions of years before calendars existed, in furnaces of light and clouds of dust.
Shadows of Earth
Birthday · May 9, 2023
A little universe, just for you
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APOD published May 9, 2023. Credit: Marcella Giulia Pace. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Can you find two Earth shadows in today's image? It's a bit tricky. To find the first shadow, observe that the top part of the atmosphere appears pink and the lower part appears blue. This is because the top half is exposed to direct sunlight, while the lower part is not. The purple area in between is known as the Belt of Venus, even though Venus can only appear on the other side of the sky, near the Sun. The blue color of the lower atmosphere is caused by the Earth blocking sunlight, creating Earth shadow number 1. Now, where is the second Earth shadow? Take a look at the Moon. Do you notice something unusual about the lower left part? That area appears unusually dark because it is in the shadow of the Earth, creating Earth shadow number 2. To be precise, the Moon was captured during a lunar eclipse. This carefully timed image was taken in Sampieri, Sicily, Italy, in July 2018.
Image credit: Marcella Giulia Pace