Astro-Porn of the Day: Moonrise from space.

[mckitterick]

Aboard the ISS, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata just captured and shared this otherworldly photo of the crescent Moon rising from Earth's atmosphere:


Click the image to see the NASA page.

This is not a false-color image: The gas and dust in each layer of the atmosphere act as prisms, filtering out certain wavelengths of light. You can't really get a view like this from Earth (well, for a lot of reasons, but that's one.) Here's another shot of a moonrise from space, taken by astronaut Ron Garan in 2011:


Click the image to see Ron Garan's Twitpics page.

Happy moonrise Friday!

Chris

Comments

[carmy-w.livejournal.com]

That is neat!

And with pics like this, who needs to photoshop all the planets together into an arc? The real thing looks just as cool.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! It's like the "Pale, Blue Dot" image:




Earth, as photographed by the Voyager spacecraft from four billion miles away. Click the image to see the NASA page discussing Earth
in this context.