Sunday, January 03, 2010

Eclipsed Blue Moon

This image of the eclipsed blue moon at APOD is beautiful!  The gradient of the penumbral shadow makes the moon look three-dimensional.  Not in the true sense of the curved terminator on the moon, but in a “fake” sense of being illuminated by a large surface.  It looks like someone is holding a big white reflector behind the sun, say several million miles across.

Oh, and if you're wondering what the “blue” business is about, a blue moon is just a second full moon in a given month.  Usually there's only one.