A Squashed Space Station Supermoon

On Monday, Discovery News asked for our readers’ photographs of the weekend’s “supermoon.” Unfortunately, we totally overlooked a photographer who was orbiting 250 miles over our heads who had a front row seat for the bright lunar event. European astronaut André Kuipers watched the perigee moon set over the Earth’s atmosphere on May 5 from the International Space Station, but it looked remarkably different from how the supermoon looked for most of us on the ground.

As seen from Kuipers’ vantage point, the reflected light from the bottom of the lunar disk had to travel through more atmospheric gases than light from the top of the disk. The light from the bottom of the lunar disk was therefore strongly refracted, causing the light to bend upward, giving the moon a squashed appearance (above). An earlier photograph by Kuipers (below) shows the supermoon in all its glory, completely free from any atmospheric distortions — but the “squashed supermoon” is beautiful in its own right.

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Source: news.discovery.com

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