Captured by Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander on March 14, 2025.
Turn around.
How is this possible? Both the earth and moon are the same distance away from the sun, give or take. On earth the moon looks about the same size as the sun, but since thw moon is smaller than the earth how does sunlight leak like that? Is the variance in distance between the earth and moon that large?
Edit: oh it’s a solar eclipse still. Moon blocking sun to earth.but since thw moon is smaller than the earth how does sunlight leak like that?
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I believe this is a partial eclipse, or the beginning or end of a full eclipse. The Sun isn’t all the way behind the Earth, it’s poking out to the bottom-right.
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The glowing ring around the entire disc of the Earth is the atmosphere, which acts as a lens. The Moon has essentially no atmosphere, so when the Moon eclipses the Sun we on Earth see a sharp-edged dark disc encroach over the Sun until totality which blocks enough of the light from the Sun’s photosphere that we can see the wispy corona. The Earth’s atmosphere means you will see a bright ring around the planet throughout the entire eclipse even into totality as sunlight is refracted around the planet toward the Moon. We can see this from Earth during Lunar eclipses; as the Moon passes into Earth’s shadow, we see a large soft-edged semi-circular shadow pass over the face. Once all direct sunlight is off of the Lunar surface, your eyes adjust and the entire Moon’s disc seems to glow a dull red. Why red? Something something air, something something refraction, something something chromatic abberation.
Is the variance in distance between the earth and moon that large?
The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 0.25%, 1/400th, of the distance to the Sun. As you note, the Sun happens to be 400 times larger than the Moon, so viewed from Earth the two bodies coincidentally appear very close in size. The eclipse above was taken from about a quarter million miles further away than the solar eclipses you may have seen in person. The Earth-Moon barycenter is inside the Earth’s volume, so we’ll call that insignificant. If anything, from this vantage point the Sun should appear very slightly smaller than it does from Earth, as the Moon is farther away. This is essentially insignificant as they’re already tiny in the sky. Because your brain is made of monkey meat which processes the sky as a dome 100 feet tall and 1000 feet wide, you perceive them both as closer and larger than they are. You could cover the Sun or Moon’s disc by holding a pea at arm’s length.
During what we on Earth call a Solar eclipse, the Moon casts a small shadow the size of a European nation or American car dealership that moves quickly across the face of the Earth. Anyone standing still sees totality for about 5 minutes. The Earth’s shadow is much wider, the entire moon fits in Earth’s umbra with room to spare, which is why the entire moon goes dark red.
Viewed from the Moon’s surface, a solar eclipse would be between 2 and 4 hours of dim, ruddy twilight lit only by a firey halo of Earth’s atmosphere surrounded by the Sun’s corona. Your eyes would adjust to the dark enough to make out stars if you looked in most other directions.
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The atmosphere deflects light (which is why it doesn’t get pitch black as soon as the sun sets) and creates this ring despite the Earth being about 4x the angular size than the Sun when viewed from the Moon.
I thought this was sun behind earth. Not sun behind camera looking at earth.
Yup, it’s the sun behind Earth. The shadow of the Moon is quite small and often there is only partial shadow (except for total eclipses). Look at any eclipse path, it’s really thin; if the Moon cast such a big shadow everyone would get a total eclipse often.
Edit: with a full eclipse, most of the hemisphere actually does experience a partial eclipse at some point (see latest US total eclipse. The Moon’s shadow is basically a blurry circle, only 100% dark in a thin spot in the center if you’re lucky.
Oh so I was right. The light is just visible because of what you said before. Thank you.
I was told there would be a big prism and a rainbow, wtf
A solar eclipse is when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. In contrast, a lunar eclipse is when the Sun passes in front of the Moon!
Ow, my existence
Eh. I find existence to be overrated.
If the sun passes in front of the moon, we’ve got a fucking problem.
I think a solar eclipse is when anything passes in front of the sun, ie when the sun is eclipsed. We just don’t often see it from the moon
Yup. You’re basically right, clarification on “anything”:
- Not the celestial body you’re on (that’s called night)
- Not a structure on the celestial body you’re on (that’s called being in the shadow)
- Not an object with too small angular size to cause much dimming, such as Venus or the ISS (that’s called a solar transit)
Indeed. It’s with respect to a viewer. Nothing is eclipsed in this image.
eclipse /ĭ-klĭps′/
noun
- The partial or complete obscuring, relative to a designated observer, of one celestial body by another.
- The period of time during which such an obscuration occurs.
The earth (one celestial body) is partially obscuring the sun (another celestial body) relative to the Blue Ghost lander (the designated observer).
It’s an eclipse.
If you’re on the earth it’s an eclipse. On the moon nothing is between you and the sun, or you and the earth.
Put another way, an eclipse is only an eclipse from a certain observation point. For example, the crew of Integrity observed a solar eclipse on their way around the moon. The moon was between them and the sun. There was no eclipse for the rest of us on earth.
Check out Mr. Confidentially Incorrect over here. An eclipse is exactly the definition you posted, I’m not sure how you could read it so wrong.
The viewer is the Blue Ghost lunar lander’s camera here
A lunar eclipse is when the earth passes between the sun and the moon.
Think what it would imply if the Sun passed between the Earth and the Moon. That’s the joke.
I guess I got whooshed 🙈
TIL. Nature is amazing.
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Did you mean to say a lunar eclipse?
A lunar eclipse here on Earth is a solar eclipse when viewed from the Moon. :)
You know what, that’s a really good point
