This is one of 13 images acquired on March 9, 2016, by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four-megapixel charge-coupled device and Cassegrain telescope on the DSCOVR satellite. The bright spot in the center is sunglint”the reflection of sunlight directly back at the EPIC camera. (Credit: DSCOVR EPIC team)
On March 9, 2016, and approximately 1 million miles from Earth, NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) captured the shadow of the Moon moving across Earth's sunlit face. The only total solar eclipse of 2016 moved across the Indian Ocean and past Indonesia and Australia into the open waters and islands of Oceania and the Pacific Ocean.
What is unique for us is that being near the Sun-Earth line, we follow the complete passage of the lunar shadow from one edge of Earth to the other, said Adam Szabo, NASA's project scientist for DSCOVR. I am not aware of anybody ever capturing the full eclipse in one set of images or video.
View the complete animation here.
