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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
The Persistence of Moonlight
Explanation: Known to some in the northern hemisphere as December's Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon , the last full moon of 2023 is rising in this surreal mountain and skyscape. The Daliesque scene was captured in a single exposure with a camera and long telephoto lens near Monte Grappa, Italy. The full moon is not melting, though . Its stretched and distorted appearance near the horizon is caused as refraction along the line of sight changes and creates shifting images or mirages of the bright lunar disk . The changes in atmospheric refraction correspond to atmospheric layers with sharply different temperatures and densities. Other effects of atmospheric refraction produced by the long sight-line to this full moon rising include the thin red rim seen faintly on the distorted lower edge of the Moon and a thin green rim along the top.
| Date | December 30, 2023 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Image Credit & Copyright: Giacomo Venturin |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |