Every weekend, an image that made the news or caught our attention. On October 14, a Noaa satellite moving at the Lagrange point L1 immortalized the shadow of the Moon above the United States.
Menacing shadow
A eclipse ring of Sun took place on October 14 over the United States, from Oregon to Texas, via Mexico and Central America.
The menacing shadow of our natural satellite, plunging a large part of North America into darkness in broad daylight, was immortalized by the satellite’s Epic spectroradiometer (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera). DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory).
This lookout of the Noaa (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the American administration in charge of oceanic and atmospheric observations, was built by the NASA and launched by SpaceX in February 2015.
Four months later she joined the Lagrange point L1at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction of the Sun.
The DSCOVR program was severely threatened in 2017.
We remember that in December 2021, the satellite also captured the shadow of the Moon at the gates of the South Pole, which gave rise to image of the week no. 163.
Three sounding rockets for the eclipse
Note also that NASA launched three sounding rockets on October 14 Black Brantwhich were implemented from the missile test range of White Sandsin New Mexico.
The objective of the mission, called Apep (Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path), was to observe how the sudden drop in sunlight during the eclipse affects the upper atmosphere of our planet.
