Hideaway
Illustration Credit & Copyright:
Inga Nielsen
Is this a picture of a sunset from Earth's North Pole?
Regardless of
urban legends circulating the Internet, the answer is no.
The above scene
was drawn to be an imaginary celestial place that would be calm and peaceful,
and therefore titled Hideaway.
The scene could not exist anywhere on the
Earth because from the Earth, the
Moon and the
Sun always have nearly the same
angular size.
This is particularly apparent, for example, during
solar eclipses.
Still, the scene drawn is quite striking, and the crescent part of the "moon"
shown is approximately accurate given the location of the parent star.
In reality, the
North Pole of Earth
looks different.
Starting earlier this month, the North Pole even has a
web camera returning near-live pictures.