Eclipse Graphics

Here are some of the best graphics to illustrate the solar eclipse. These are courtesy of NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

sun_earth_eclipse_print

This graphic (above) illustrates accurately how the eclipse occurs. It is particularly interesting because the geometry is correct. The text of the article is worth reading. The Moon moves right to left. The Umbra is the darker cone, barely reaching the Earth. This graphic illustrates the eclipse at 17:05:40 UTC on August 21, 2017.

In this article we see an impression (below) of the 2017 eclipse as it will be seen by the cameras on board the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite. The article contains an animation for 2017.

eclipse_L1.0720_print

This animation (below) uses the actual images taken from DSCOVR of the 2016 eclipse.

eclipse_epc_2016068

You can see how the shadow passes across the Earth from West to East, moving faster than the Earth is rotating. This is because the motion of the shadow is related directly to the speed of the Moon as it crosses the path of light from the Sun, and not to the change of angle of the Moon relative to the Sun. The angle changes by only a few degrees while the shadow cone moves completely from the West side to the East side of the Earth.

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