A "full-body photo" of the earth taken 1.6 million kilometers away: a unique perspective showing the astronomical phenomenon of annular eclipse
CTOnews.com, October 20 (Xinhua)-- the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured an amazing picture of the solar eclipse from a unique perspective at an altitude of about 1 million miles (1.6 million km) above Earth on Saturday, October 14.
The EPIC camera on the NASA DSCOVR spacecraft captured this photo of an annular solar eclipse on October 14, 2023 from nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away. In this photo, much of North America is shaded by the moon, showing a large area of black shadow.
The moon blocks most of the sun's light during the Ring of Fire solar eclipse on October 14, 2023. CTOnews.com Note: DSCOVR is a joint project of NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force. The satellite was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to Lagrange Point 1 in 2015, a gravitationally stable point between the Earth and the sun.
The main task of DSCOVR is to monitor the solar wind to improve space weather forecast. But it also makes a considerable number of Earth observations using NASA's EPIC instrument, which stands for "Earth Polychromatic Imaging camera".
Annular eclipse (annular solar eclipse) is a kind of solar eclipse. When it happens, the central part of the sun is dark, and the edge is still bright, forming a halo. This is because the moon is between the sun and the earth, but it is far away from the earth and can not completely cover the sun. When an annular eclipse occurs, the projections of objects sometimes overlap.
