No, that’s not a smudge on your screen, nor a photographer’s wayward thumb. In this image, taken June 10, 2021, the blurry dark brown spot over the Arctic is a shadow cast by our Moon during a solar eclipse.
This photograph was captured by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a camera and telescope which sits aboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate
Observatory Satellite (DSCOVR). DSCOVR orbits a point of gravitational balance
between the Earth and Sun known as the L1 Lagrange point, nearly 1 million
miles away from our planet.
EPIC provides high quality, color images of Earth,
which are useful for monitoring factors like the planet’s vegetation, cloud
height, and ozone. And every once in a while, it has the opportunity to
capture a solar eclipse.
“Taking images of the sunlit half of Earth from a
distance four times further than the Moon’s orbit never ceases to provide
surprises, like occasionally the Moon getting in our field of view, or the Moon
casting shadow on Earth,” said Dr. Adam Szabo, the NASA Project Scientist of
DSCOVR.
NASA’s EPIC, or Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), sits aboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory Satellite (DSCOVR). EPIC provides high-quality, color images of Earth, which are useful for monitoring factors like the planet’s vegetation, cloud height, and ozone. And every once in a while –– most recently, June 10, 2021 –– it has the opportunity to capture a solar eclipse. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Lisa Poje & Greg Shirah/Ernie Wright/Alison Gold
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is positioned between the Sun and
Earth, leading the Moon’s shadow to be projected onto Earth’s surface. During a
total solar eclipse, the Moon completely blocks the Sun. During an annular
solar eclipse, like the one on June 10, the Moon is near its
farthest point from Earth and appears smaller than the Sun in the sky. As the
two align, the Sun appears as a ring of fire surrounding the dark disk of the
Moon.
On June 10, viewers in parts of Canada, Greenland, and Russia were treated
to a full annular eclipse. People in a handful of other locations, including
parts of the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, eastern United States, Alaska, and
northern Africa, were able to catch a partial solar eclipse, where only part of
the Sun is blocked by the Moon, leaving behind a crescent-shaped piece of Sun.
EPIC didn’t have too bad a view, either.
You can find more photos and videos from EPIC, including a few lunar
photobombs, here.
By Alison Gold
NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md.
No comments:
Post a Comment