APOD: Green Flash at Moonrise
Jun 5, 2015The June 5, 2015 image from APOD is amazing, and something I’ve never heard of before. The green flash is pretty well known coming when the sun sets and rises, but I’ve never heard of it coming reflected off the full moon on moonrise. (I imagine it could be seen at moonset as well?)
Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel López (El Cielo de Canarias)
From APOD:
Follow a sunset on a clear day against a distant horizon and you might glimpse a green flash just as the Sun disappears, the sunlight briefly refracted over a long sight-line through atmospheric layers. You can spot a green flash at sunrise too. Pinpointing the exact place and time to see the rising Sun peeking above the horizon is a little more difficult though, and it can be harder still to catch a green flash from the fainter rising Moon. But well-planned snapshots did record a green flash at the Full Moon’s upper edge on June 2nd, from the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma. Looking a little south of due east, this long telephoto view finds the rising Moon above mountains and a sea of clouds. In sunlit profile are the mountaintop Teide Observatory telescope domes on the island of Tenerife some 143 kilometers away.