ESA’s Proba-2 satellite captures two partial solar eclipses

Oct. 26 () –

ESA’s Proba-2 mission, which monitors space weather on our planet, captured two partial solar eclipses on October 25 Leveraging your unique point of view.

A solar eclipse is caused by the movement of the Moon around the Earth. Despite their very different sizes, due to their separation, the Moon appears to be about the same size as the significantly larger Sun in the sky. Occasionally, the Moon passes in front of the Sun, blocking its light, so part of the Earth’s surface is in the Moon’s shadow. The alignment is not always perfect, so not all eclipses are total solar eclipses, informs the ESA.

On October 25, the Moon blocked only part of the Sun’s light, creating what is known as a partial eclipse. It was visible from most of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, with the Moon blocking 82% of sunlight near the North Pole. In Europe, up to 40% of sunlight was obscured during the event.

This partial eclipse was observed by the Proba-2 mission with its SWAP instrument studying the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) where it focuses on the solar corona, the Sun’s hot and turbulent atmosphere, at temperatures of about a million degrees.

For us on Earth, the Moon passes in front of the Sun only once during a solar eclipse. Since Proba-2 orbits the Earth in about 100 minutes, it was able to observe this eclipse not once but twice. Also, the Moon was first observed as it passed through the field of view in the upper right corner, but without blocking sunlight.

The first observation of the eclipse around 10:30 UTC was interrupted when Proba-2 experienced an occultation. Such occultation occurs when Proba-2 flies through Earth’s atmosphere and the SWAP instrument is not active. The second partial eclipse was captured around 12:25 UTC.