Presented without comment: The crescent Moon, "dark" half lit by reflected Earthlight, setting over the limb of our planet as seen by astronaut Ron Garan aboard the space station:
[Click to embiggen.]
Credit: NASA
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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July 31st, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Nice! I was so ticked that it decided to storm tonight in Boulder for the hour surrounding the time I was going to try to photograph the moon, but there’s no way I could’ve gotten something like that! Phil – I don’t suppose you have connections that can get anyone up to the ISS to try a shot like that?
July 31st, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Thanks, I need new wallpaper (which also happened to be a shot of the moon…)
July 31st, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Ron Garan keeps taking amazing piccatures.
July 31st, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Wow! Absolutely beautiful!
August 1st, 2011 at 1:25 am
Wow; you can see the moon from space?!!! (Sorry; just channeling my inner Jenny McCarthy.)
This makes a brilliant desktop background, by the way, even though it’s a bit under-res and I had to stretch it.
Thanks, as always, for sharing!
August 1st, 2011 at 1:55 am
@ ^ Bigfoot : Only from certain relatively very near parts of space!
If you travel further out than maybe (?Guesstimating here?) about halfway between Jupiter and Saturn (7 AU perhaps?) the Moon and Earth will blur together into a single spot of light just as the twin stars of Alpha Centauri do! Even before you get to Proxima Centauri (4.2 light years) even the combined earth-and-moonlight speck will fade from unaided eyesight visibility.
From beyond about 50 light years radius our Sun* ceases to be visible without optical assistence. A 50 ly radius is a tiny grain of sand on the cosmic sandpit that is our Milky Way Galaxy. Our Milky Way in turn is but the most minute speck in the wider universe.
This image was taken on the very boundaries of space hovering over the gravity well of Earth – and it is one superluminously splendid image.
Seconding your thanks to the BA for this.
—————
* our Sun’s absolute magnitude 4.82 ie. at 33 light years that’s how bright it’d be. The sharpest human eyes in good dark conditions can see down to mag. six or so I gather. Staggeringly enough our Sun is actually in the top 5% of brightest stars with most stars being red dwarfs, orange dwarfs and white dwarfs.
August 1st, 2011 at 2:13 am
That’s no space station. It’s a moon.
August 1st, 2011 at 3:14 am
But our Sun could be (barely) imaged from the Andromeda galaxy (M31) if astronomers had a Hubble Space Telescope at their disposal. But they would have no reason to consider it special among the billions of other stars they could see in our galaxy.
August 1st, 2011 at 6:04 am
I like how you can see the night side of the moon due to Earthlight reflecting off of it.
August 1st, 2011 at 6:51 am
This photo is taken from the southern half of the planet, isn’t it?
@MTU:
Space is big. Is that what you wanted to say?
August 1st, 2011 at 8:08 am
“Sunset and evening star, and one last call for me,
and may there be no moaning at the bar as I set out to sea”
Tennyson (he asked that that poem always be printed last in any collection of his work).
August 1st, 2011 at 8:23 am
Wow.
August 1st, 2011 at 8:34 am
Literally, AWE-SOME. What a great image.
August 1st, 2011 at 9:46 am
[...] se ve la luna creciente sobre la atmósfera terrestre, fue captada por el astronauta Ron Garan desde la Estación Espacial [...]
August 1st, 2011 at 9:59 am
I’ve made many a photograph of the crescent moon and earthshine. But after seeing this, I quit.
August 1st, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Has a lunar eclipse ever been filmed from space?
August 1st, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Now THAT would make an awesome poster!! Beautiful!!!
August 1st, 2011 at 1:53 pm
For Dr Flimmer
Yes, this pic has been taken from the southern half of the planet. On July 31, 13.51 GMT the ISS was about 1500 miles southwest of Perth (Australia) in the Indian Ocean.
August 1st, 2011 at 1:53 pm
This was taken on my 40th birthday, so I’ll consider it a gift!
August 1st, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Stunningly beautiful pic!
August 1st, 2011 at 6:15 pm
@10. DrFlimmer : “@MTU: Space is big. Is that what you wanted to say?”
Pretty much but you know how I like to expand on things and be verbose and all!
@15. Kevin :“I’ve made many a photograph of the crescent moon and earthshine. But after seeing this, I quit.”
Don’t quit. You may not get shots quite like that one but you may still take some different but equally or almost equally wonderful ones.
@11. Peter Davey : Excellent quote. Cheers!
August 1st, 2011 at 6:30 pm
@16. Toby Barnett : “Has a lunar eclipse ever been filmed from space?”
Yes, indeed!
See for examples :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/02/19/what-does-a-lunar-eclipse-look-like-from-the-moon/
taken from the vicinity of our Moon itself as observed by the Japanese space agencies Kaguya spaceprobe.
Then solar eclipse from space~wise we have :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/03/02/stereo-eclipse/
from this blog taken by the STEREO spaceprobes studying our Sun.
Also too :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/08/another-insanely-awesome-shot-of-the-solar-eclipse/
Taken by another Japanese satellite, Hinode this time.
August 1st, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Oh then there’s this clip :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/10/20/sdo-lunar-transit-now-with-video/
taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory too.
Plus we have this site :
http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/19/5678539-holiday-calendar-lunar-eclipse-as-seen-from-space
going back to the original questions lunar variety of eclipse as observed from the European SMART-1 probe.
Whilst this one :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lps0j2xpye0&NR=1
is fromthe International Space Station on Youtube.
August 1st, 2011 at 7:08 pm
@16. Toby Barnett : “Has a lunar eclipse ever been filmed from space?” (Again.)
Okay, just one more for you here :
http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/MoonEclipse.htm
because it’s particularly pertinent for that question.
Originally found coming via this old comment :
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/02/19/what-does-a-lunar-eclipse-look-like-from-the-moon/#comment-157466
by (#15) Randy (February 19th, 2009 at 9:10 am) in that first Kaguya link for you at #22.
Sometimes re-reading through old comments and old threads can be rewarding!
Confusingly enough, Kaguya is also named SELENE :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELENE
Combining occidental and oriental lunar mythologies.
August 2nd, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Ron Garan needs to stop taking pictchers. He’s making the rest of us look bad.