                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2025 April 3

                              The Da Vinci Glow
                   Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgia Hofer

   Explanation: A 26 hour old Moon poses behind the craggy outline of the
   Italian Dolomites in this twilight mountain and skyscape. The one
   second long exposure was captured near moonset on March 30. And while
   only a a sliver of its sunlit surface is visible, most of the Moon's
   disk can be seen by earthshine as light reflected from a bright planet
   Earth illuminates the lunar nearside. Also known as the Moon's ashen
   glow, a description of earthshine in terms of sunlight reflected by
   Earth's oceans illuminating the Moon's dark surface was written over
   500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. Of course earthshine is just the
   most familiar example of planetshine, the faint illumination of the
   dark portion of a moon by light reflected from its planet.

                     Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

