A satellite image of Japan shows that the moon appears flat. The effect is caused by the refraction of the Earth’s atmosphere, distorting the appearance of the moon.
As part of the world preparing to observe the past total lunar eclipse In the year, a researcher drew attention to an image from a weather satellite in Japan, where he spotted the moon In a strange way: in the image taken by the spacecraft, our natural satellite looks distorted, as if it were flat.
Photo: Simon Proud/NCEO/Japan Meteorological Agency/Canaltech
The image was identified by Simon Proud, a researcher at the UK’s National Center for Earth Monitoring. “This morning Himawari Satellite, from Japan, saw a strange shape on our planet … Does anyone know what it is? ,” he wrote on Twitter.
Check out the “weird shape” he mentioned:
This morning, Japan # Himawari The satellite saw a strange shape above our planet … Does anyone know what it is? 😃 pic.twitter.com/fwN8AMHhb6
– Simon Proud (@simon_sat) November 7 2022
A few minutes later, Proud made a new post with a picture of the moon in its “normal” form. “The downside to posting this joke on Twitter is that many of my followers are experts, and they know the answer,” he said in a gentle tone.
The downside of playing this game on Twitter, many of my followers are experts and know the answer. 🍻 pic.twitter.com/GzVaGrTRG5
– Simon Proud (@simon_sat) November 7 2022
The curious appearance of the moon in the first image is the result of atmospheric refractionThat is, it is an effect caused by the transmission of light through air with different intensities and temperatures. Without this perturbation, the light would follow in a straight line, providing a “real” image of the object.
When looking at something towards the horizon, such as in a satellite image, there is more atmosphere. The “excess” of air distorted the image of the moon – but it is not limited to this, since this effect can also be observed at sunrise and sunset, for example. For this reason, in an attempt to reduce the distortion of the atmosphere, professional astronomers prefer to observe interesting objects in the upper sky as much as possible.
source: Simon Proud
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