Click for GIFs of all 3 eclipses or here for full-res movie.
Also available on YouTube
Solar Eclipse of May 10th, 2013
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Here is XRT's view of the annular eclipse that occurred between May 9th and 10th. This event was visible from Australia and various Pacific islands; check out Wikipedia to see the path of the eclipse and head over to Space.com for a nice image gallery. Though this was an annular eclipse from the ground, the Moon just skimmed the Sun from Hinode's perspective in orbit. And since the satellite whirls around the Earth about once every 90 minutes, Hinode passed through the eclipse path a total of four times. XRT only captured three of the resulting eclipses, however, because the both the Earth and the Moon were blocking the Sun for one of the orbits (this is also why one of the eclipses is truncated halfway through). The animation above shows the second of the three eclipses that XRT saw; click for GIFs of all three. Notice how each eclipse has a different orientation. This is due to parallax, which is an effect that results from the satellite's ever-changing viewing angle. Parallax is also behind the slight curve in the Moon's motion. A nice explanation of this effect can be found at Bad Astronomy. Keywords: Eclipse, Full Disk Filters: Ti_poly |
(Prepared by Patrick McCauley)
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