When a large earth was treated in the lunar eclipse last week with the rare sight of the blood moon last week, a lonely robot caught a completely different perspective far away from home.
From the viewpoint in the mare crawl, not far from Mons Latreille, the Blue Ghost Lander watched the earth fully covered the earth and the sun disk for a spectacular overall sunin sternis.
“This is the first time in history that a commercial company actively operated on the moon and was able to observe a total solar eclipse in which the earth blocks the sun and throws a shadow on the surface of the moon,” wrote Firefly Aerospace in his mission blog.
A total solar eclipse is the result of a rare, perfect alignment, which is known as sycyia between earth, moon and sun, while the three bodies appear their cosmic waltz. There are two types. A solar eclipse, as seen from the earth, is blocked when the moon runs between the earth and the sun, the light of the sun is blocked and brings day by day.
A lunar eclipse is when the earth fits between the sun and the moon, but the moon does not disappear. While the moon slips into the shadows of the earth, the sunlight breaks through the atmosphere of our planet, so that red wavelengths can be run through longer and the moon can temporarily dye an eerie, beautiful blood red.
However, the perspective would be different for a viewer on the moon. The earth slips against the sun and creates a scene that looks very similar to a solar eclipse that looks from the earth.
There are no human spectators on the moon, and there have been no longer for half a century. But the active Blue Ghost Lander was in the right place at the right time to observe this phenomenon that was seen so rarely by some people or in other ways.
Since the Lander is solar companies, he had to rely on backup batteries to work during the five-hour solar eclipse. And the surface temperature gradient was intense and fell from 40 to -170 degrees Celsius (104 to -274 Fahrenheit).
This is because the moon has no insulating atmosphere to catch heat. In permanently shaded regions, the temperatures can drop below -246 degrees Celsius.
The result was worth it. The lander not only managed to record the entire event, but also the photobombing of Venus and Mercury, which was seen on the right or left of the sun, in the Timelapse video below when they increase the playback quality and shame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2P-Z_CXSOS Framborder = “0” allow = “accelerometer; autoplay; lettership; encrypted media; gyroscope; image-in-image; web-share” referrer policy = “strict-in-wenn-cross-original” permissible “permissible”
Blue Ghost only has a very limited time to carry out his scientific operations – just a lunar day. That is about 14 earth days. As soon as the moon night falls, the landing will operate for a few hours before it is switched off forever. Overcoming the Sunless conditions on the moon is simply too complicated.
Firefly Aerospace hopes to release more pictures of the lunar eclipse, but it is a good sign for his operations that it has such an impressive observation.
May the resulting science be plentiful … and we can hardly wait to see what the small machine has in store.
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