Two or three times every year, the NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft observes the Moon passing in front of the Sun and in that case it becomes a black disk. This happened for example on October 7, 2010. No big deal, at least until Scott Wiessinger, who works with images of that probe, and Ernie Wright, who works with the images of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) space probe, combined with extreme precision the right images of the two probes to create an image of an eclipse never seen before.
The work was carried out taking as reference the point of view and the exact time of the image from the SDO space probe. This information was used to reproduce an image of the Moon exactly as it would’ve appeared in those conditions if it hadn’t been obscured because of the eclipse. This has been possible thanks to the six billion individual measurements of the lunar surface taken by the LRO probe.
The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument can perform very precise measurements on the lunar surface elevations that have allowed to build a very accurate model of the Earth’s satellite. To use this model to create a proper image it was also necessary to consider the distance and viewing angle of the SDO probe and the Moon’s motions.
Because the surface of the Moon is full of mountains, valleys and especially craters, its shadow on the Sun during an eclipse is a bit irregular. The image constructed using the data from the LRO space probe perfectly matched that shadow, confirming the remarkable accuracy of the work performed but also of the model built.
In the end, this work allowed NASA scientists to verify that the data of the SDO probe are very accurate regarding position and time and that the models constructed using data from the LRO probe are just as accurate in the creation of lunar images. It’s a confirmation that the information we’re receiving from these two probes are reliable and are processed in a correct manner, allowing us to learn more about the Sun and the Moon. In this case they have also given us a really amazing image!
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