Summary
In the past two days, I have come across unfortunate errors in two separate articles relating to astronomy.
The first was the reference to "a full moon magnified by the atmosphere", as a caption for one of your photographer's pictures of the full moon seen last weekend. This perpetuates a long-held belief that the moon is bigger when seen near the horizon. Not so. The atmosphere never magnifies anything, not even the sun at sunset.See the full content of this document
Extract
Unfortunate Errors in Astronomy Stories
Indeed, the only possible effect is that of a slight squashing of the image due to atmospheric refraction near the horizon. The answer to the illusion of the big moon lies in psychology and not science. It has something to do with the proximity to the mo...
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