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Clementine's camera reveals (from right to left) the Moon lit by earthshine, the Sun's glare rising over the Moon's dark limb, and the planets Saturn, Mars, and Mercury (the three dots at lower left). Planetshine is the dim illumination, by sunlight reflected from a planet, of all or part of the otherwise dark side of any moon orbiting the body.
This is only 0.01% of the radiance from direct Sunlight. [4] Earthshine has a calculated maximum apparent magnitude of −3.69 as viewed from Earth. [3] This phenomenon is most visible from Earth at night (or astronomical twilight) a few days before or after the day of new moon, [5] when the lunar phase is a thin crescent. On these nights, the ...
A planetary phase is a certain portion of a planet's area that reflects sunlight as viewed from a given vantage point, as well as the period of time during which it occurs. The phase is determined by the phase angle , which is the angle between the planet, the Sun and the Earth.
A heliostat (from helios, the Greek word for sun, and stat, as in stationary) is a device that includes a mirror, usually a plane mirror, which turns so as to keep reflecting sunlight toward a predetermined target, compensating for the Sun's apparent motions in the sky.
Space mirrors are designed either to increase or decrease the amount of energy that reaches a planet from the sun with the goal of changing the impact of UV radiation; or, to reflect light onto or deflect light off of a planet in order to change the sun's lighting conditions.
The Znamya project (Russian: Знамя, meaning "Banner", Russian: ⓘ) was a series of orbital space mirror experiments in the 1990s that intended to beam solar power to Earth by reflecting sunlight. The project was the brain child of Vladimir Syromyatnikov, who served as the project's lead engineer. [1]
These particles scatter the light, reflecting some of it to the ground. Hence, the sky can remain illuminated even after the sun has set. Images showing a planetary terminator can be used to map topography: the position of the tip of a mountain behind the terminator line is measured when the Sun still or already illuminates it while the base of ...
A layer of snowfall increases local albedo, reflecting away sunlight, leading to local cooling. In principle, if no outside temperature change affects this area (e.g., a warm air mass ), the raised albedo and lower temperature would maintain the current snow and invite further snowfall, deepening the snow–temperature feedback.