A silvery bubble rises through Earth's atmosphere. Seen from Skylab, well above the Earth's dense atmosphere, the rising Moon is at first almost unrecognisable but for its surface markings. Moonlight enters the atmosphere and then leaves again, a path length twice that in moonrises seen from Earth's surface. The atmospheric lens pushes the lower limb upwards to create the highly flattened shape. Look out for a moonrise (or sunrise) from a high flying aircraft, the distortion is almost as extreme.
