Sunset at the North Pole

[pegkerr]

A friend sent this to me today, and it's too beautiful not to share:

This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. You also see the sun below the moon.

Edited to add: Okay, I'm totally gullible, and this is photoshopped.

johnridley is right; it's still very pretty.

Comments

[redbird]

That is very good photoshop. An alien landscape, cattitude said, and then that he wants to visit.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Photoshop, big time. The sun and moon are nearly the same size in the sky, thus we have solar eclipses of the type we do. Even when the moon is closest, it's about a 12% difference in angular size (from .49 to .55 degrees in the sky), not about 2500% the difference as that would indicate. If you ever see this in real life, time to say your prayers.

I don't think it's possible for the moon to have that geometry of a crescent from the north pole either. And that's the constellation Lyra in the upper right, and I'm sure it's oriented N/S, not E/W as indicated there. I think this general layout could happen closer to the equator, though of course either the sun is way too small or both the moon an Lyra are way too big.

It's very pretty though.

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

The orbit of the moon is offset from the ecliptic (the plane of earth's orbit, and hence the plane the sun traces in our sky) by a couple of degrees (hence the fact that we don't have lunar eclipses every month), so at "new" moon one can indeed have a southern sliver of moon from our point of view, and at the north pole right before the equinox the sun could be right below the horizon and the moon right above.

Nevertheless, the size of the "sun" tears it. Because I like to think that picture descriptions are honest, I was trying to construct a scenario where the yellow dot in the picture was actually a sun dog or some such rather than the actual sun, even though it doesn't look much like one, but the geometry's not right--like rainbows, they happen at fixed angles, and it's impossible for one to show up between the sun and the moon.

Nevertheless, it should definitely be possible to take a picture of a crescent moon close to kissing the dusky horizon from the pole, and someone should! That would be seriously neat.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Beautiful!

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm totally gullible

If it's any consolation, you're not alone. ;-) I tend to be too trusting for my own damned good, assuming everyone is being straightforward and honest and all that jazz, and taken by surprise time and again when it turns out some of them aren't. Fortunately, most of the time it's no worse than a practical joke like this one--though even I didn't fall for it when my younger brother tried to convince us he'd just seen a news item about a man who was allergic to nutrients!

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

It is strikingly beautiful, whatever its pedigree. But good to know the actual details too.