Quote:
|
Originally Posted by AntonioLao What you have witnessed are earthshines - the faint light reflected from the Earth on the darkside of the moon. |
Note- the light I saw was not radially symmetric- that is to say- if the earth is shining specifically on a thin wedge of the moon, your argument would make sense. But that would imply the earth reflects nonuniformly, which I don't believe. If you imagine the moon as a circle, and the bottom right of the circle is brightly lit due to the sun, the overall moon has a bit of shininess to it due to reflecting earthshine, and the
top left of the moon had a thin line of higher brightness.
I don't think it was earthshine. The most logical things I could think of were:
- The mountains on the far side of the moon were catching light, and reflecting it down on the far edge of the moon.
- There is interstellar dust above the surface of the moon, reflecting light down onto its surface.
- It was an optical illusion, caused by the differential in the shading between the edge of the moon and the background behind it. Thus, my eye "created" the visual highlight when in fact it did not exist. I would have liked to have gotten a photo of it.
- It was caused by gravity pulling light onto the moon's surface. This, I doubt highly.