... Earth at Night . ... This remarkably complete view of Earth at night is a composite of cloud-free, nighttime images. ... Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. ... Sometimes falling ice crystals make the atmosphere into a giant lens causing arcs and halos to appear around the Sun or Moon. ... On that night, the smallest Full Moon of 2012 reached its full phase only about 4 hours before apogee, the most distant point from Earth in the Moon's elliptical orbit. ...