Talk:Earth's shadow

Comments from the peanut gallery

I came here because of a post at Wikipedia_Talk:Physics. The article looks pretty good as it stands. One section you might want to add is a very short description of lunar eclipses using an {{main|lunar eclipse}} template and possible {{seealso|umbra}}. Another section might cover satellites passing into earth's shadow.

The following quote could be worded a little better.

"The Earth's shadow is as curved as the planet Earth is, and this shadow extends hundreds of thousands of miles into space. When the Moon, the Sun and the Earth are in the right position, the Earth's shadow makes the Moon appear to be red, creating a Lunar eclipse.[3]"

In particular earth's shadow makes the moon dark not red. The redness comes from a ring of light scattered through earth's atmosphere. Essentially, a person on the moon would see a ring (or portion of a ring) of light around earth corresponding to sunrises and sunsets on earth. That statement itself is probably too simplistic, but it gives the right idea. (Perhaps the redness can be attributed to the belt of Venus, I don't know.)

Further, while Earth's umbra extends hundreds of thousands of miles into space the anteumbra (where earth is smaller then the sun but still blocks out some of the light) extends forever. Further this statement may better fit in the umbra article since this article is concerned with the atmospheric effect and the atmospheric effect only goes as far as the atmosphere. While there is no end to Earth's atmosphere the highest part we see light scattered from in the day is probably significantly close then 100k miles.

It is a fun little article. I am glad to have read it. TStein (talk) 20:13, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help!

I wanted to thank all the various editors who have helped fix this new little article up before it debuts as a DYK. Invertzoo (talk) 20:49, 21 October 2010 (UTC)