Songfacts®:

• Earthshine, an astronomic phenomena first described by Leonardo Da Vinci in the Codex Leicester between 1506 and 1510, is the term describing the sunlight which is reflected by the Earth to illuminate the Moon. This happens every 29.5 Earth-days, hence the lyric "on certain nights, when the angles are right..."
• Geddy Lee, Rockline, May 13, 2002: "Earthshine was just not right in its original incarnation. The lyrics were very interesting, and very evocative, but I didn't feel in the end-and Alex agreed-that the music really equaled what was there lyrically. We were selling the lyrics short. So we had this jam music that we really were excited about, especially this riff, this main riff, that is the verses for Earthshine, and I rebuilt the song vocally around that riff. Then we proceed to just carry on with it, and before we knew it we had a whole knew song that was really exciting."
• Alex Lifeson, Rockline, May 13, 2002: "Earthshine was the first song that we wrote. At the time we both felt that we weren't going to be too precious about it, it was part of that early period that we went through with the writing, about 5 months into the project I guess? Six months? We reviewed the song and decided to completely rewrite it. There were some lyrical changes, but 100% of the music was thrown into the garbage, and we started over again with it. Which was really a testament to working this way without a deadline, and how important it was not to have a deadline with this record." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington, for all above