Starship Asterisk*

Hi all,
New guy on the block, so thought I'd take a moment to short-intro myself. I'm an amateur astronomer of some half-century experience, & APOD rocks! -- it's where I start my days...sorta my 'home page'. I didn't realize there was an associated forum, but today a question came up....I looked around a bit & found the links to here.

I usu. spend my time 'out there'....deep sky stuff, & am not too up on sun dogs, sky pillars & retrofracting-ice ionization whizmajingies & such....so pardon my ignuntz if this is out of place. In the captioning for today's image, it states "....A nearly full Moon and planet Earth's shadow set together in this scene ...."
Unless I'm missing some technicality, it would seem the shadow would be rising, not setting. Is there something that would cause my thought to be incorrect? What's the official party line on this event??

T'anx in advance,
Clear'ns!
~S*H

First welcome to the discussions. It'll be nice to have a different perspective brought into some of these discussions (not that things aren't interesting enough around here).

To answer your question: At sunset doring the full phase of the moon, it will rise below the belt of venus in earths shadow. A day later during sunrise, it will be noticeable in the shadow below the belt of venus as it sets. This is because the shadow is evident on both sides of the globe and is evidenced by the fact that the belt of venus is most evident in the eastern sky during sunset and in the western sky durnig sunrise (opposite the sun).

So depending on which side of the earths shadow the moon is traveling through, it will be visible in either the morning (setting) or in the evening (rising) near the horizon.

Hope this explains it for you.

And again, WELCOME