Earth's shadow
shadow that the Earth casts on its own atmosphere
Earth's shadow (or Earth shadow) is the shadow that Earth itself casts through its atmosphere and into outer space, toward the antisolar point. During the twilight period (both early dusk and late dawn), the shadow's visible fringe —sometimes called the dark segment or twilight wedge—appears as a dark and diffuse band just above the horizon, most distinct when the sky is clear.
Since the angular diameters of the Sun and the Moon as viewed from Earth's surface are almost the same, the ratio of the length of Earth's shadow to the distance between Earth and the Moon will be almost equal to the ratio of the diameters of Earth and the Moon.
Since Earth's diameter is 3.7 times the Moon's, the length of the planet's umbra is correspondingly 3.7 times the average distance from the Moon to Earth: about 1.4 million km (870,000 mi). The diameter of Earth's shadow at lunar distance is about 9,000 km (5,600 mi), or 2.6 lunar diameters, which allows observation of total lunar eclipses from Earth.
Appearance
Earth's shadow cast onto the atmosphere can be viewed during the "civil" stage of twilight, assuming the sky is clear and the horizon is relatively unobstructed. The shadow's fringe appears as a dark bluish to purplish band that stretches over 180° of the horizon opposite the Sun, i.e. in the eastern sky at dusk and in the western sky at dawn. Before sunrise, Earth's shadow appears to recede as the Sun rises; after sunset, the shadow appears to rise as the Sun sets.
Earth's shadow is best seen when the horizon is low, such as over the sea, and when the sky conditions are clear.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earth's shadow” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.