Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Earthshine

Here are two photos of a phenomenon called earthshine -- when the light reflected off the earth illuminates the dark side of the moon. You can only see it when the moon is nearly new (and I'm not sure you will be able to see it as these pictures are digested by blogspot), but it's a lovely and mysterious thing.


In any case, I took these two pictures of earthshine with my ultrazoom Panasonic Lumix just a month apart, one (on the right) in California at the end of August, the other slightly more wobbly one (on the left) here in Australia last night. The earthshine is there, if very very dimly...

As if the pollen-charged change of season were not reminder enough, the different angle pretty decisively confirms that I am on a different side of our own celestial body!