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solar eclipse

Last post 03-20-2008 6:52 AM by Terry Kucera. 1 replies.
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  • 03-19-2008 8:26 PM

    solar eclipse

    kevin (lm) Have astronauts seen an eclipse from space or photographed one?
  • 03-20-2008 6:52 AM In reply to

    • Terry Kucera
    • Top 10 Contributor
    • Joined on 02-27-2005
    • NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA
    • Posts 165

    Re: solar eclipse

    Hi Kevin,

    That is a really interesting question. I had never seen such an image. I found some mentions of them on the web (one pages says the first one was taken by Gemini astrounouts in the 1960s), but it is hard to find the actual picures. I did find this one from Skylab: http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10299236&wwwflag=2&imagepos=4 

    Some other things I turned up while looking around - this article talking about the spacestation perhaos seeing an eclipse, although there were no photos of the actual eclipse I could find afterwards: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11763975/

    That article shows a neat picture  taken in 1999  from Mir space station. They were not in between the Eath and Moon, so they did not see the eclipse itself, but the image shows the shadow the moon cast on the Earth. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/02dec_isseclipse.htm

    Robotic spacecraft  have seen eclipses from space, although I have not found footage of a total.

    Here is a movie of observations by the Yohkoh spacecraft from 1998: http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/chaissonat4/chapter1/medialib/video/yohkoh_eclipse.gif 

    The STEREO-B spacecraft saw an eclipse of the Sun from space, but it was farther away from the Moon than the Earth, so the  moon appears smaller. You can see the movie here: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/stereoimages/transit022507.shtml 

    The Sun looks funny in these because the images are of the sun in X-rays (Yohkoh) and  ultraviolet light (STEREO).

    Terry 

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