NASA Takes Spooky Photo Of Moon’s Shadow On Earth During Eclipse

The Terrans were aware of an exciting astronomical event last month: an annular solar eclipse, which casts a lunar shadow over the Arctic Circle. Today, NASA shared an image of this shadow, taken by the Polychromatic Earth Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the NOAA Deep Space Climate Observatory nearly a million kilometers from Earth.

Since the Moon is much closer to Earth than EPIC, our lunar partner occasionally jumps into images that EPIC tries to capture of Earth, and eclipse shadows also come with this territory. “Taking images of the sunny half of the Earth at a distance four times farther away than the orbit of the Moon keeps creating surprises, like sometimes the Moon entering our field of vision, or the Moon casting a shadow on Earth, ”said Adam Szabo, the project scientist within the DSCOVR team, in a Nasa Release. Launched in 2015, EPIC (aboard DSCOVR) has now imaged multiple shadows of eclipses across Face of the Earth: Last month’s annular eclipse joins the total eclipse events of 2016 and 2017 as captured by EPIC.

Annular solar eclipses occur when the Moon moves between The Earth and the Sun, making the star appear as a halo of fire around the black silhouette of the Moon. The recent June 10 eclipse was partially visible to people in parts of the United States, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. Lucky ones in parts of Canada, Russia and Greenland could bask in the shadow of the “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse. But no one on Earth had sight of EPIC, which captured the dark brown antumbra of the Moon encamped on the North Pole of our planet. The moon’s shadow looks like a little mold spreading on a fruit. Or, as one Gizmodo editor exclaimed by viewing the image: “THE EARTH IS HAUNTED.“

EPIC normally images the Earth to study its climate—Give researchers on Earth a constant flow of information on the planet’s cloud cover, vegetation and ozone. He recently captured images of the Western coast Forest fires, visible even from a distance from EPIC. The satellite (DSCOVR) that hosts the camera is at a point of gravitational equilibrium between the Sun and Earth, called the Lagrange point L1. (This is one of five such points; when launched, the James Webb Space Telescope heads towards L2.)

While total solar eclipses completely erase the Sun, annular solar eclipses leave this solar halo around the Moon, creating an arguably cooler picture for viewers on Earth. This happens because the Moon is over far away from Earth during an annular solar eclipse, making it too small in our field of view to fully cover the Sun.

If you missed this annular eclipse, don’t worry. If you are in the Western Hemisphere, you might see another one in 2023.

More: The 9 Best Photos From This Morning’s Sunrise Eclipse