Bad Astronomy

Lunar flight

How about some nicer news for a change?

Pilot and fellow skeptic Billy Derbyshire took a pretty cool picture of the full Moon rising at sunset.

Click to Brobdingnagify.

As he told me:

I took this picture from the cockpit of a Gulfstream II business jet. It typically cruises at .82 Mach and altitudes up to 45,000 feet. The photo was taken about 300 nautical miles west of Bermuda.

Wow. If you look carefully, just under the Moon is a triangular shadow pointing up at the Moon. I suspect that’s a shadow of a cloud. I’ve seen this many times flying myself, though not at 45,000!

By the way, this shot was taken with an iPhone. Quick, someone get this guy a 12Mpx Nikon!

Thanks to JREFer Sean McCabe for sending this to me!