September 22, 2005
Your birthday coincides with the eternal dance of celestial bodies — planets tracing their ancient orbits, moons rising and setting, comets...
Orange Moon, Red Flash
Birthday · September 22, 2005
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APOD published September 22, 2005. Credit: Stefan Seip. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
This remarkable telescopic image highlights the deep orange cast of a waning gibbous Moon seen very close to the eastern horizon earlier this week, on September 19. In fact, today's equinox at 22:23 UT marks the beginning of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere and makes this view from Stuttgart, Germany an almost Autumn Moon. While the long sight-line through the atmosphere filters and reddens the moonlight, it also bends different colors of light through slightly different angles, producing noticeable red (bottom) and green (top) lunar rims. Also captured here floating just below the Moon is a thin, red mirage (inset) -- in this case, an atmospherically magnified and distorted image of the red rim. Of course, this tantalizing lunar "red flash" is related to the more commonly seen green flash of the Sun.
Image credit: Stefan Seip