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Earth Eclipses the Sun

Feb. 21, 2017
Several times a day for a few days the Earth completely blocked the Sun for about an hour due to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory's orbital path (Feb. 15, 2017).

Several times a day for a few days the Earth completely blocked the Sun for about an hour due to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory's orbital path (Feb. 15, 2017). The edge of the Earth is not crisp, but kind of fuzzy due to Earth's atmosphere. The entire video clip here shows the ending of one such eclipse over -- just seven minutes. The sun is shown in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. These eclipses re-occur about every six months. The Moon blocks SDO's view of the sun on occasion as well

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PIA21461_Earth_Eclipses_Sun_big.mp4
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SDO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Its Atmosphere Imaging Assembly was built by the Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), Palo Alto, California.

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