Solar Eclipse, As Seen From Mir

David Schick writes "This cool picture was the Astronomy Picture of the Day from the Goddard Space Flight Center on August 30. Apparently, someone on Mir had a chance to take a snapshot of the solar eclipse over Europe. Kudos to Brian B. Riley on the AMSAT-BB mailing list for finding this cool nugget. " Check out the image archive while you're there. Several little files that meet Rob's First Rule of Art ^[?] .

Comments

Definitely a sight to see

[Accipiter]

A picture like this really puts the size of the earth into perspective. From the ground, it appears that a whole hemisphere is eclipsed from the sun, but seeing the actual coverage area puts things into perspective. Seeing pics like these also makes me envy the astronauts.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Definitely a sight to see

[Accipiter]

Not exactly. The cosmonauts were cooped up in a space station that was falling apart. Nevertheless, they deserve my respect because:

A) they stuck it out for so long, and
B) They're in space and I'm not.

Thanks for the point. I agree, but my comment wasn't about the photo in particular. I envy [all space travellers] because they get to see phenominal views with that picture being an example. :)

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:I agree

[Masem]

Didn't Al Gore initiate a plan for a permanent satelite in space that would transmit images to a web site 24/7?

Re:I agree

[Accipiter]

Are you kidding? Al Gore invented space.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Mirrors?

[Telsa]

I haven't checked how many of these carry the entire back catalogue (which is _well_ worth it), but the first two certainly do:

• http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/ apod/astropix.html, UK,(London)
• http://www.phy.mtu.edu/apod/astropix.html , US (Midwest)
• http://mirrors.inside.net/apod/, Switzerland
• http://www.sai.msu.su/apod/: Russia
• http://phyhp.phy. ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod/astropix.html Taiwan (Chinese)
• http://phyhp.ph y.ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod_e/astropix.ht ml: Taiwan (English)
• http://apod.aguianet.com.br/: Brazil
• http://www.astro.cz/apod/

I got this list from the info page on the main site. I've just tried 'em out, and the Swiss one appears to be down but the rest are there.

These all point to the picture of the day (which is of Earth, though it doesn't look like it!), of course: you'll have to head to the archives to find the eclipse picture. They've been carrying loads of eclipse pictures recently, and they're beautiful.

My socks!

[Anonymous Coward]

> And those two dots in the background, that can't be stars, can they?
> I'd think it's space junk. Heck, perhaps it's debris from Mir itself... ;-)

No, it's not. What you see are two of my white socks! They just disapear sometimes (especially the right ones), now I know what happen: The rotation+the magnetic fields inside my washing machine opens up wormholes and they're transfered up into space..

*That's* why you should not wash pets in a washing machine.

Re:You wouldn't think...

[__aaswyr5774]

There's also angular diffraction from light interacting with the object (moon) itself. However, scattering from the air and diffraction from the moon isn't what we're seeing here. In this case the largest part of the effect is because the source (sun) and the object (moon) are the same size as seen from the screen (earth).

If the sun were instead a point source, then the shadow would be much sharper. Since it and the moon are the same angular size, though, the center of the shadow gets complete blockage of the sun, a quarter of the way out from the center you get mostly complete blockage, etc. This continues all the way out to the edges where the moon is only nibbling away at the sun's disc, and the shadow on the Earth is correspondingly minimum.

(And they said my Physics degree would be useless :-).)

Imagine..

[Anonymous Coward]

..a cluster of these eclipses, you could darken a significant part of the world! hehe.. had to throw that in.

Re:What part of the Earth?

[Accipiter]

The website says the Eclipse was on August 11th of this year. That would mean the shadow you see is probably over parts of Europe or Asia.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap9 90810.html - This is a link to a diagram of the Eclipse's path.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Moon shadows

[dattaway]

I remember seeing an eclipse in several years back. All of us at work were ordered outside to see it (my boss was cool.) There was a little light, enough to see, not like a sunset, but like a dim bulb for a sun. Shadows from anything showed up as cresents on the ground. The low light outside everywhere had a mystic look. The world was different that day.

http://www.spanner.org/eclipse.html

[will]

http://www.spanner.org/eclipse.html

Remember Io and Jupiter?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think was posted here on /. back in April, but I'll post it again in case you're interested. The Hubble Space Telescope took some very nice pictures of Io casting a shadow on Jupiter. This is the link to the story. Click on the picture to go to the download page.

Mir over Paris during eclipse

[anticypher]

Did anyone notice that the Mir station actually flew over Paris just before the eclipse hit northern france?

Just as Paco Rabanne claimed in his book on Nostradamus. Of course, nothing has happened, but I was actually slightly freaked out when I heard radio amateurs (HAMs) in france trying to contact the Mir 90 minutes before the eclipse. The Mir orbits the earth about once every 90 minutes, and its next pass put it near Paris just as the eclipse hit the west coast of France. Freaky!

Just a bit of random, off topic rambling from...

the AC