The Setting Crescent Moon

Sunsets while flying westbound can be memorable: at 20,000', they seem to last for an hour, all awash and afire with color.

Last night's moonset was gorgeous, a sight I'd not seen before. And I wasn't even flying west!

The moon was about three days old: more than the slip of a crescent, but not much. Just above the moon were Venus (magnitude -4) and Jupiter (mag. -1.8). The conjunction itself is something to see, but didn't hold a candle to the moonset.

As the moon dropped to the horizon, it changed. I wasn't watching it: I was flying the airplane, monitoring as one of my passengers took her first shot at the controls of an airplane. Someone else in the plane (Joshua?) spotted it.

The moon had become, well, maroon in color. A deep, dark red, reminiscent of its color during a total lunar eclipse, but much less orange and deeper.

We gazed for a while.