Squishy moonrise seen from space!

Check. This. Out: Moonrise as seen by astronaut Paolo Nespoli on board the International Space Station!

Holy wow! Click to spacestationate.

That is so cool. As the ISS races around the Earth at 8 km/sec (5 miles/sec), it sees up to 18 sunrises and sunsets each day, and the same number of moonrises and moonsets. Paolo had to snap quickly to get this sequence, which couldn’t have taken more than a minute to elapse.

But what’s with the squished Moon? Here’s a closeup of the Moon in the three pictures:

What causes this? It’s an atmospheric effect, due to the air surrounding the Earth acting like a lens, bending (or, if you want to impress your friends, refracting) light. You’ve probably seen how a spoon looks bent when it sits in a glass of water, right? Same thing. Light passing from the vacuum of space through our air gets bent a bit. The amount of bending depends on how much air the light is going through; the thicker the air the more it’s bent.

When ...

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