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Birthday · September 7, 2014

Full Moon Silhouettes

September 7, 2014

The elements that make you — the calcium in your bones, the oxygen in your lungs — were scattered across space by dying stars long before...

Full Moon Silhouettes

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APOD published September 7, 2014 · Video still. Credit: Mark Gee; Music: Tenderness (Dan Phillipson). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

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Full Moon Silhouettes

Original APOD · September 7, 2014

Have you ever watched the Moon rise? The slow rise of a nearly full moon over a clear horizon can be an impressive sight. One impressive moonrise was imaged in early 2013 over Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. With detailed planning, an industrious astrophotographer placed a camera about two kilometers away and pointed it across the lookout to where the Moon would surely soon be making its nightly debut. The above single shot sequence is unedited and shown in real time -- it is not a time lapse. People on Mount Victoria Lookout can be seen in silhouette themselves admiring the dawn of Earth's largest satellite. Seeing a moonrise yourself is not difficult: it happens every day, although only half the time at night. Each day the Moon rises about fifty minutes later than the previous day, with a full moon always rising at sunset. A good time to see a moonrise will occur at sunset on Tuesday as the Moon's relative closeness to Earth during a full phase -- called a supermoon -- will cause it to appear slightly larger and brighter than usual.

Image credit: Mark Gee; Music: Tenderness (Dan Phillipson)

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