On Sept. 21, whereas skywatchers on Earth had been eagerly watching a partial photo voltaic eclipse unfold, NOAA’s house climate sentinel GOES-19 was additionally retaining watch from orbit.
From its vantage level excessive above Earth, the satellite tv for pc’s Compact Coronagraph-1 (CCOR-1) recorded one thing uncommon: a pure photo voltaic eclipse from house.
CCOR-1 is designed to create its personal “synthetic eclipses.” Like all coronagraphs, it makes use of an occulting disk to dam direct daylight so scientists can research the solar’s faint outer ambiance, often known as the corona. However this time, the moon itself scootched between the instrument and the solar, permitting CCOR-1 to briefly witness a real photo voltaic eclipse in house.
Eagle-eyed observers amongst you might need seen the ensuing imagery appeared quite unusual. As an alternative of simply the photo voltaic disk vanishing, all the corona disappeared. That wasn’t a cosmic anomaly; it was a consequence of picture processing.
“Usually, every picture seen by CCOR-1’s detector is a mixture of the corona and brilliant daylight scattered throughout the telescope,” Invoice Thompson of NASA’s Goddard House Flight Heart informed Spaceweather.com. “A mannequin of the scattered mild is subtracted to disclose the corona. In the course of the eclipse, the scattered mild went away, however the subtraction proceeded as if it hadn’t. It ended up subtracting an excessive amount of.”
As a result of CCOR-1 orbits Earth, the moon can often slip between the instrument and the solar. That is not attainable for coronagraphs stationed farther away in house, similar to SOHO on the L1 Lagrange level, as a result of the moon would by no means move via their subject of view. To our information, this can be the primary time a space-based coronagraph has ever recorded a pure eclipse.
The moon crosses CCOR-1’s subject of view roughly as soon as a month, normally in a straight line. However this time, its path appeared to zig-zag. That odd trajectory wasn’t brought on by the moon however was quite probably the results of a scheduled yaw-flip maneuver that befell on Sept. 22 to assist calibrate the spacecraft. The maneuver is designed to change GOES-19’s angle, its orientation in house, and will have made the moon’s in any other case straight path seem crooked within the coronagraph’s processed imagery.
Though the flip occurred the day after the eclipse, it is attainable that preparations for the maneuver the day earlier than altered GOES-19’s angle, its orientation in house, and made the moon’s in any other case straight path seem crooked within the coronagraph’s processed imagery.
