Last weekend’s “ring of fireside” solar eclipse was spectacular from deep space as well.
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite snapped a tremendous photo of the eclipse, which thrilled tens of millions of skywatchers across the the Americas on Saturday (Oct. 14).
DSCOVR lies nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, so its perspective is a singular one. The image shows our good blue planet against the blackness of space, its vibrant hues muted in a single sizable patch — much of North America — by the moon’s dusky shadow.
DSCOVR is a joint effort of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force. The satellite launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2015 to Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable point between Earth and the sun.
DSCOVR’s principal task involves monitoring the solar wind to enhance space weather forecasts. However it also does a good little bit of Earth remark using NASA’s EPIC instrument, whose name is brief for “Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera.”
Now we have EPIC to thank for the stunning view of Saturday’s eclipse.
Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes between Earth and the sun when the trio are properly aligned. That alignment is comparatively rare, since the moon’s orbit around Earth is tilted by about 5 degrees in comparison with our planet’s path across the sun.
By a cosmic coincidence, the moon and sun are roughly the identical size in Earth’s sky. So the moon can completely block the sun’s disk from our perspective, which ends up in a complete solar eclipse.
However the moon’s orbit around Earth is barely elliptical slightly than perfectly circular, with a closest approach point (called perigee) and a farthest point as well (apogee). If the Earth, moon and sun align properly around apogee, the result’s an annular or “ring of fireside” eclipse, since the moon is not quite large enough in our sky to cover the sun completely. As an alternative, a vibrant ring of sunshine stays across the lunar disk — and that is what those lucky enough to be within the 130-mile-wide (209 kilometers) “path of annularity” saw on Saturday.
DSCOVR wasn’t the one spacecraft to record Saturday’s eclipse for posterity. Numerous Earth-orbiting satellites captured footage from just a few hundred miles up, showing the moon’s shadow sweep southeast across the contiguous United States.