I'd ask Pam if the rising moon looked like a wrinkled orange in her camera...and she said it did! But it was the mis-shapen moon that captured our imagination! The atmosphere was having all sorts of fun with that rising moon, and, while not "an exquisite photograph", what happened was too good not to share! (It was misshapen several ways before getting to this point when it pulled away!)
- - - - - See Michelle Renee's @bokehdot comment below! She called it perfectly!
- - - - - Ethel @ethelperry and @maggiemae asked for an explanation and I found some interesting information from NASA that I put in a comment below.
@ethelperry@maggiemae While the following from a nasa.gov site might seem to not directly address the "lava lamp" phenomenum, I can see hat what they write makes a lot of sense in this instance. Certainly the line of sight is the flattest and lowest of any point where the moon will rise:
The true color of the Moon, as shown in the multitude of pictures from the Apollo flights, varies from nearly white through shades of gray. Shadows on the moon are very crisp and dark because there is no atmosphere to scatter light. The colors that you see on Earth are the result of scattering by the Earth's atmosphere as the Moon's light travels to your eyes. Just as with the Sun or distant clouds, the atmosphere scatters light out of the line of sight between the distant object and your location. More "gunk" (aerosols, pollutants, water vapor) in the atmosphere causes more scattering. Blue wavelengths are scattered the most and red wavelengths the least, so the original white/gray Moonlight shades through yellows and oranges as the atmosphere's load of gunk builds up. The moon is usually the most red (and dimmest) right at the horizon on a summer evening, where the light's path through the atmosphere is the longest and the gunk is the densest, while a moon overhead on a cold, clear winter night seems nearly unaffected.
The true color of the Moon, as shown in the multitude of pictures from the Apollo flights, varies from nearly white through shades of gray. Shadows on the moon are very crisp and dark because there is no atmosphere to scatter light. The colors that you see on Earth are the result of scattering by the Earth's atmosphere as the Moon's light travels to your eyes. Just as with the Sun or distant clouds, the atmosphere scatters light out of the line of sight between the distant object and your location. More "gunk" (aerosols, pollutants, water vapor) in the atmosphere causes more scattering. Blue wavelengths are scattered the most and red wavelengths the least, so the original white/gray Moonlight shades through yellows and oranges as the atmosphere's load of gunk builds up. The moon is usually the most red (and dimmest) right at the horizon on a summer evening, where the light's path through the atmosphere is the longest and the gunk is the densest, while a moon overhead on a cold, clear winter night seems nearly unaffected.