At 1 million miles from Earth, the distant DSCOVR satellite, aka the Deep Space Climate Observatory, recently captured the moon’s eerie shadow over Antarctica.
The intriguing, relatively rare event occurred in the early hours of Dec. 4. The moon moved into a perfect position between Earth and the sun, called a total solar eclipse. NASA posted an image on Instagram showing the resulting shadow over Antarctica. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station spotted the eclipse, too.
“For a total solar eclipse to take place, the Sun, Moon, and Earth must line up exactly,” the space agency wrote.
Down in extremely remote Antarctica, few people (but likely many penguins) experienced the effects of the eclipse. It’s an eerie, otherworldly event. The moon blotches out the sun; the sky darkens; and the eclipse (by blocking the sun’s extreme radiance) reveals our star’s ghostly outer atmosphere, called the corona.
From a distance over four times farther away than the moon, the six-year-old DSCOVR satellite regularly beams back a full view of Earth. It takes a picture every two hours.
One of DSCOVR’s primary missions, however, is to monitor space weather. This includes the solar wind, a beam of particles from the sun that can at times threaten to disrupt our power grids, cell phone networks, and beyond.
We won’t experience a total solar eclipse in 2022. The next total solar eclipse on Earth will happen on April 20, 2023. But the following one on April 8, 2024 promises to be epic. It will pass over a wide swathe of land from Mexico, into Texas, and across the nation through Maine.
