Environment
A Stupendous Satellite Animation of the Solar Eclipse
“I am not aware of anybody ever capturing the full eclipse in one set of images or video,” says a NASA scientist.
When the moon blotted out the sun this week, a plane full of “umbraphiles” was high in the air to bear witness. Here’s one of the views they captured from Alaska Airlines Flight 870:
Even higher, though, was America’s year-old Deep Space Climate Observatory, recording what looked like an immense cigarette burn sliding across Earth. NASA, one of the agencies that runs it, has released an animation of 13 snaps from its EPIC camera and other imaging devices, and it’s about as wonderful as as you’d expect. The agency explains what makes the footage special: