Earth’s shadow is rising
When you find yourself outside around sunset on a mostly clear evening it’s second nature to look to the west. So often Mother Nature treats us to amazing tapestries of colour as the sun dips below the horizon.
Last Saturday Brian Gomes snapped this amazing photo of the “eastern” sky at sunset. When he showed the picture to his friends they thought it was a sunset picture. The photo was taken at Ferguson’s Cove just after sunset and before moonrise.
Without knowing it, Brian snapped a very cool photo of the elusive Belt of Venus. The belt of Venus is named after the Roman goddess Venus. It’s also known as the antitwilight arch but that’s not nearly as pretty!
As the Sun sets or rises its light
moves through the atmosphere and casts a shadow of the Earth onto the sky. You are, in fact, seeing Earth’s shadow. As the Sun sets west of you, the light continues to reflect off the atmosphere to the east, but some of it is blocked by Earth itself. So the lowest part of the atmosphere opposite the sunset is no longer lit up.
The Belt of Venus is the thin yet remarkable pink arch just above the Earth’s shadow at dusk and at dawn.
It is best visible when the atmosphere is cloudless, yet very dusty, just after sunset.
We go out to watch sunsets all the time; maybe we should turn away from the spectacular vista in the west and see what’s happening on the opposite side of the sky.