On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans saw day turn temporarily to night as the Moon passed between the Sun and Earth to create a total solar eclipse.
On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans saw day turn temporarily to night as the Moon passed between the Sun and Earth to create a total solar eclipse.
As people in the 115-mile-wide (185-kilometer-wide) path of totality looked up and saw the Moon conceal the bright orb of the Sun and obscure all but its wispy corona, Earth-observing satellites captured imagery of the Moon’s shadow as it raced eastward over North America.
About 1 million miles from Earth, NASA’s EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) imager on the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite, captured the above views of Earth between 16:02 and 20:32 Universal Time (12:02 and 4:32 p.m. Eastern Time). DSCVR is a joint NASA, NOAA, and U.S. Air Force satellite built to observe our planet from Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable position between the Sun and Earth.
The Moon’s shadow swept over North America, from the Pacific coast of Mexico, through Texas, and over the Great Lakes before crossing the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Read more at NASA Earth Observatory
Image: By Michala Garrison and Wanmei Liang, using data from DSCOVR EPIC and VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).
