I love the image.
I’m always amazed at how much light the Earth and Moon generate. 
The moon looks awfully close to the earth. Why is that?
you two quit that!
The moon expands in size when it is close to the horizon. 
The notes to the photo mentions that the photo was taken at a distance equivalent to the distance from Earth and the planet Mercury, so the Earth and the moon will appear close to each other from that distance. Also, the moon’s position in its orbit around the Earth will determine how close the moon will appear to the Earth in the photo. A similar photo taken 8 hours later might show a different spacing between the Earth and the moon.
thanks, Doug! Maybe not much diffeence in 8 hours, but in a few days certainly. I assumed in error it was the waxing half moon, i.e. apparent biggest distance from view of mercury or sun.
There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about the moon, back in April of 2006 APOD and NASA published this report, all true BTW:
Using the new camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to confirm that the Moon is made of green cheese. The telling clue was the resolution of a marked date after which the Moon may go bad. Controversy still exists, however, over whether the date resolved is truly an expiration date or just a “sell by” date. “To be cautious, we should completely devour the Moon by tomorrow,” a spokesperson advised.
you can only see maximum distance between earth and it’s moon if the moon is perpendicular to the line of sight of the viewer
I was daydreaming when I come up with the 8 hours number. I was thinking about the Earth’s rotation in 24 hours, which, of course, would have nothing to do with the image. What matters is the 28 day orbit of the moon around the Earth.
what would be behind or in front of the earth much of the time
yes, what? please tell! 
an’ not a bit of it quits moving…bloody awful, it is 
I can see my private island yacht.
