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marzo 09, 2016 - Proba2

PROBA2 views Partial Solar Eclipse - 8 & 9 March 2016

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

Press release available only in original language. 

On 2016 March 8 and 9, a solar eclipse will take place over the Pacific Ocean. This eclipse will be total -that is, the entire solar disk will be covered by the Moon- over Indonesia and the central Pacific, starting at sunrise over Sumatra and ending at sunset north of the Hawaiian Islands. Additionally, large parts of South-East Asia, Alaska and Australia will witness a partial solar eclipse. The path of totality will have a maximum width of 155 km and the maximum duration will be 4 minutes and 9 seconds at the point of greatest eclipse, which is over the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Unfortunately, this eclipse will take place during night time in Belgium, so it can not be observed from ground here. Luckily, we do have the #proba2 spacecraft observing the Sun nearly continuously. Due to its sun-synchronous orbit, #proba2 follows the terminator, the dividing line between day and night on earth, and is thus able to observe a partial solar eclipse. Because #proba2 has an orbit of only 90 minutes, it will pass through the Moon’s shadow and observe a partial solar eclipse two times on March 9: between 00:40 UT and 00:54 UT and again between 02:58 UT and 03:13 UT. Additionally, the Moon will appear two times in the field of view of the solar instruments onboard #proba2, SWAP and LYRA, without obscuring the solar disk.

SWAP, an Extreme-Ultraviolet solar telescope, observes the solar corona in a passband centered on 17.4 nm. The structures we see in SWAP images have a temperature of approximately 1 million degrees. LYRA, an X-ray/Ultraviolet radiometer observes the total incoming light levels from the Sun in several wavelength bands.

More information about these instruments is available here: SWAP | LYRA.

We are collecting all of our SWAP data products for this eclipse in one place for easy access. Some directories linked below contain placeholder images from the total eclipse on 2015 March 20 for now. On March 9, these images will be overwritten with eclipse observations as soon as they are available.

SWAP images and movies of the eclipse are provided in three varieties: image only; image with instrument and timestamp text; and image with logos, instrument, and timestamp text. All images and movies should be credited based on the data terms of use information near the bottom of this page.

  • Best Image Only: http://proba2.oma.be/Events/2016-Mar-09-SolarEclipse/swap_eclipse_2016_03_09_no_labels.png
  • Best Image with Timestamp: http://proba2.oma.be/Events/2016-Mar-09-SolarEclipse/swap_eclipse_2016_03_09_timestamp.png
  • Best Image with Logos and Timestamp: http://proba2.oma.be/Events/2016-Mar-09-SolarEclipse/swap_eclipse_2016_03_09_logos.png

Additionally every still image from the eclipse sequence, in all three of the varieties described above, will be available via this link: http://proba2.oma.be/Events/2016-Mar-09-SolarEclipse/png_sequences/.

SWAP Movies of the eclipse will be updated as soon as data from the spacecraft is available on the ground. Movies will also be available in the three varieties discussed above, in MP4 format, compressed for web users and uncompressed for media users. (Media note: All movies are encoded using h264 at 25 fps.)


Credit Images:proba2, europeanspaceagency