Surprised I had to go this far down to find someone asking. Yeah you nailed it that's exactly what causes it. Unclear whether the same phenomenon can happen with a sunset, but my assumption is that it would be the reverse effect-- i.e. the sun would start to look more like an arch with the points touching the horizon.
But the moon is always traveling in the same direction, and the earth always rotates in one direction. So, certain alignments and relative movements will be impossible.
Yeah but the moon starts traveling in front of the sun and then passes the sun so depending on the timing it could be an upside down devil horns or a right side up
Whether it's horns or an arch depends on timing. However, due to the consistency of the relative motions in play, horns on a sunrise will always get thicker as the moon moves past the sun. On the other side then, during sunset, an arch would similarly be getting thicker while the sun goes down and the moon moves past it.
What you can't have, for one example, is horns that get thinner during sunrise.
I think it looks thicker as it rises because the sun is getting brighter and therefore more overexposed. During an eclipse, the moon takes about 5 hours to traverse the full diameter of the sun. During a sunrise, the sun takes about 5 minutes to go from partially visible to fully above the horizon. So any actual change in thickness is negligible.
Just to add clarity, the both rotate the same direction and revolve generally the same, but as far as I can remember, the moon has the second most eccentric orbit of a major body in the solar system. Its path relative to the earth moves up and down the sky. Most other bodies are locked in the ecliptic plane from the solar systems formulation. The moon has a troubled past that sent in a weird way. This kind of alignment id guess is fairly rare. Tilted where the horns are pointed left or right would be a lot more common. Nature is awesome.
There's no reason why this could not happen at sunset. Actually next year there will be a full solar eclipse visible in the Balearic Island just before sunset but it won't be a devils sunset. The moon will be moving across the sun as it sets.
Actually, either an arch or horns could appear at sunset, depending on the timing. First, the Earth, Moon and Sun are roughly in the same plane. Second, the apparent arc of the through the sky, including at sunrise and sunset, is on this plane (though the Earth is slightly tilted, visible in the asymmetry of the horns. Third, during an eclipse, the Moon begins to cover up one side of the Sun, following this arc, covers it up, and ends up covering the other side. Hence, it should be possible to get horns at sunset during any total solar eclipse if you put yourself in the right place at the right time.
The sun moves 3% faster than the moon in the sky. That’s why the moon rises and sets 29 times every 30 days. Eclipses can happen at any time of day (and the same partial eclipse can happen at sunrise for one viewer and sunset for another).
Not trying to insult the original poster of this question… But it’s kind of good you had to scroll this far down because it’s pretty damned self-evident what is going on.
This is exactly it. It was the morning of the 29th. I'm surprised there weren't more pictures of the eclipse when it happened. This is a rare sight. But I heard it called a "double sunrise". One horn rose and then the other. I had a dream about two red suns that morning. Like Tatooine.
Yeah, I heard nothing about this, and I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to this stuff, enough of one that I've driven my family twice to be in the path of totality. Dang, would have loved to have poked my head out for it.
I had no idea either, I've used heliocron to grab a pic from my tower camera every day at sunrise/sunset for the last 6 years. So I went back to look and it was cloudy here -lol
Just chiming in to say that this is sunrise, not dawn. A lot of people conflate the two but there is a subtle difference. Dawn is when the sky lightens prior to sunrise. Sunrise is when the sun appears above the horizon.
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u/Nayzo 18h ago
Is this caused by a partial solar eclipse at dawn? Does this mean you can also have a Devil's sunset?