At 1 million miles from Earth, the distant DSCOVR satellite, , 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. 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) . 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 . But the following one on It will pass over a wide swathe of land from Mexico, into Texas, and across the nation through Maine.