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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Earth Occults Sol - ...as seen from Luna

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005 … .htm]Click

*Got to fly to Luna if you'd like to witness this event. 

Lots of interesting info in the article.  Includes Alan Bean's comments regarding the Apollo 12 experience of having witnessed an occultation of Sol by our home planet (when their spacecraft flew through Earth's shadow) and a photo of the event.  Bean described it as "a marvelous sight."  One can only imagine.

Article also contains an artist's rendition (motion) of what this event would look like from Luna. 

You're standing on the Moon. It's broad daylight, almost high noon. The Sun is creeping slowly across the sky. How slowly? A lunar day is about 29.5 Earth-days long. So the Sun moves 29.5 times slower than our Earth-sense tells us it should. At that leisurely pace, the Sun approaches a dark but faintly-glowing disk three times its own size.

The disk is Earth with its nightside facing the Moon. You can see moonlit clouds floating over Earth's dark oceans and continents.  You can also see a faintly glowing ring of light around the planet--that's Earth's atmosphere with sunlight trickling through it.  A telescope would show you Earth's city lights, too. Beautiful.

And of course this event is directly related to http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=487]its reverse/twin event, as seen from Earth.

But I wanted to create a separate thread for it because of the uniqueness of considering witnessing Earth eclipsing Sol. 

I envy that Apollo 12 crew.

Then the eclipse begins.

Looking through dark-filtered glasses, you watch the Sun slip behind Earth.  Earth's atmosphere, lit from behind, glows red, then redder, a ring of fire the color of sunset, interrupted here and there by the tops of the highest clouds.

Oh my god, what a stunning sight that would be.  If they keep talking this way, I might change my mind about us going back to the Moon!  :laugh:

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)