Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: The reddened shadow of planet Earth plays across the lunar disk in this telescopic image taken on May 26 near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. On that crisp, clear autumn night a Perigee Full Moon slid through the northern edge of the shadow's dark central umbra. Short for a lunar eclipse, its total phase lasted only about 14 minutes. The Earth's shadow was not completely dark though. Instead it was suffused with a faint red light from all the planet's sunsets and sunrises seen from the perspective of an eclipsed Moon, the reddened sunlight scattered by Earth's atmosphere. The HDR composite of 6 exposures also shows the wide range of brightness variations within Earth's umbral shadow against a faint background of stars.