Solar Eclipse from Space: Movie.

March 12, 2007: When scientists announce they're about to calibrate their instruments, science writers normally put away their pens. It's hard to write a good story about calibration. This may be the exception:

On Feb. 25, 2007, NASA scientists were calibrating some cameras aboard the STEREO-B spacecraft and they pointed the instruments at the sun. Here is what they saw:

This is a video of The Earth's moon passing in front of the Sun.
Taken back in March, by one of the two STEREO solar observatories.

Small Video
Medium sized Video
Large Video

The purpose of the experiment was to measure the 'dark current' of STEREO-B's CCD detectors. The idea is familiar to amateur astronomers: Point your telescope at something black and see how much 'dark current' trickles out of the CCD. Later, when real astrophotography is taking place, the dark current is subtracted to improve the image.

In this case, the Moon served as a black calibration disk backlit by the sun. "The observation was no accident," she says. Mission controllers arranged the alignment with a small tweak to STEREO-B's orbit last December and engineers have been waiting for the dark current data ever since.

For more information about what you are seeing, And why it looks the way it does (very small moon) See this link:

Stereo Eclipse

[edit on 9-5-2007 by spacedoubt]

[edit on 12-5-2007 by spacedoubt]

bump

I'm sure some of you space nuts might find this interesting.
Take a look..it really is a pretty cool vid.

Ah, yes, I posted this a while ago. The object moving in front of the Sun is not the moon because it's too small. It's most likely Mercury.

Here's the link to the thread.
www.abovetopsecret.com...'

^
^^Impreza --

It is the Moon, and the Original Post explains why it looks so small. It is small because it is not photographed from the Earth. This movie was made by the STEREO-B Sun observatory which is stationed out in space beyond the Earth/Moon system. The moon looks small because the pictures were taken far away from the Moon. If this were taken from Earth, the Moon would appear exactly the same size as the Sun.

The object is much too big to be Mercury or even Venus, unless the movie was taken by a space probe somewhere in the vicinity of those planets (but it wasn't). Here's what a transit of Mercury or Venus looks like from the Earth. You can see how tiny those planets appear (especially Mercury):

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

BTW, spacedoubt (the OP) -- not to be picky, but this would not be a Lunar eclipse (when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, and casts its shadow on the Moon), but rather a Solar eclipse, which is the transit of the Moon between the Sun and an observer.

Having said that, it's still a very cool movie.

I see. Thanks for the explanation. If you look at my thread, I asked a question that no one could answer. Can you check it out and see what you can make of it? Thanks in advance.

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People


BTW, spacedoubt (the OP) -- not to be picky, but this would not be a Lunar eclipse (when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, and casts its shadow on the Moon), but rather a Solar eclipse, which is the transit of the Moon between the Sun and an observer.

Having said that, it's still a very cool movie.

Yep, Solar.
MY mistake. You weren't being picky at all. I should know better.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


I know this is going back a while but I'm very confused by this. If Stereo B is lagging behind Earth by 1,000,000 miles how can the Moon possibly transit the Sun in the FOV of stereo?

reply to post by DenyObfuscation

The STEREO satellites were launched in late 2006. When first launched they orbited Earth for a while.
stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov...

reply to post by Phage


Thanks for the quick reply. I was about to u2u the question 2u when I remembered the search feature and found this old thread.