Esri News Feed

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Cool Geo-Pic: Eclipse - Prophesy or Shadow? Depends on your point of view.


This Cool Geo-Pic comes again from NASA's Earth Observatory. While I've seen some wonderful eclipse images, this is the first that's from the "moon"s point of view".

Funny how a prophetic event to one, is just a shadow to another. Makes me wonder what an ant dreams up when he encounters my "looming darkness" on a sunny Sunday sidewalk stroll. Eghads! It blocks out the sun!

Another example that all things are relative to your point of view.

Quick "Cut & Paste" Highlights:

" ... The Moon’s shadow engulfed Taiwan and a large swath of southeastern China and the Pacific Ocean on the morning of July 22, 2009, during an unusually long total eclipse of the Sun. This pair of images from the Japanese geostationary satellite MTSAT show the view of Earth at 8:30 a.m. local time in Taiwan (left) and an hour later (right), near the time in eastern China when the disk of the Moon completely overlapped the disk of the Sun (called totality). The longest period of totality occurred over the Pacific, where the total eclipse lasted more than 6 minutes...."


download large 8:30 image image (90 KB, JPEG) acquired July 22, 2009

download large 9:30 image image (94 KB, JPEG) acquired July 22, 2009

Full Article - Click Here

References / Credits:

Exploratorium.edu. (n.d.) Total Solar Eclipse, July 22, 2009. Accessed July 22, 2009.
U.S. Naval Observatory. (n.d.)
The Sky This Week, 2009 July 17 – 24. Accessed July 22, 2009.
Espenak, F. (n.d.)
Total Solar Eclipse of 2009 July 22. NASA Eclipse Website. Accessed July 22, 2009.
Images provided by
WebGMS–MTSAT/GMS (HIMAWARI) Website, Institute of Industrial Science & Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Japan.
Instrument:
MTSAT

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