The lunar eclipse this week had many of us gazing up at the night sky to marvel at the red-tinged moon, and now we can see what that eerie effect looked like from the other side thanks to images captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. From the lander’s perspective on the moon, the phenomenon on March 14 was a solar eclipse, and the latest video shows red light cast over Blue Ghost as Earth temporarily blocked the sun. The new imagery came in shortly after the team shared a photo of the diamond ring effect captured by the lander as the sun began to reemerge.
“These images — rapidly captured by our top deck camera with different exposure settings — were stitched together in a quick clip,” Firefly said. “The red hue is the result of sunlight refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere as the sun is blocked by our planet, casting a shadow on the lunar surface.” At the beginning of the video where the images are better lit, you can see Venus as a small dot above the eclipse. And if you look really, really closely, you’ll also see Mercury to its left.
Blue Ghost landed on the moon on March 2, and Firefly has shared some pretty amazing photos and videos since, including landing footage from the spacecraft’s point of view. The lander’s mission is expected to come to an end soon with the onset of lunar night, but it’ll first observe the lunar sunset on March 16.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/see-fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-bathed-in-red-during-solar-eclipse-captured-from-the-moon-203203999.html?src=rss
