Astronaut for Hire

Kaguya captures image of eclipse

Loyal readers of this blog know that Japan's Kaguya (Selene) Mission has captured some stunning high definition images of the Moon, including video and photos of the Earth rise (partial and full). Never failing to disappoint, Kaguya has snapped another picture of the Earth from the Moon. During the penumbral lunar eclipse on February 10, Kaguya was on the far side of the Moon just as the Sun-Earth-Moon conjunction happened. From the spacecraft's perspective, the Earth came between the Sun and the Moon, leaving only a ring of light because it isn't large enough to cover the entire solar disk. This is the first time the "diamond ring" effect has been observed from the Moon.

In other Kaguya news, the mission has now posted dozens of HD videos on YouTube. Some of these were featured in the National Geographic Channel's program "Direct from the Moon" back in November. The mission is also the subject of a special issue of Science magazine. A summary of the papers in that issue is on the Kaguya website, or you can check out the Science issue itself. Some of the highlights include a new global lunar topographic map with 0.5° spatial resolution and evidence for long-lived farside volcanism.

Kaguya captures image of eclipse

Categories: Earth, Moon, space