NASA satellite captures ‘hidden’ solar eclipse from space

Solar eclipses are always spectacular events, but you always have to be in the right place at the right time to get the best view. Today, a solar eclipse occurred where noone on Earth could see it, unless you were closely watching the feed from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Called a 'lunar transit' when it's not visible from Earth, SDO watched this morning from its place in Earth orbit, as the moon passed in front of its view of the sun. The video shows the transit at two different wavelengths of light, and then slows down the second clip for a good look at it.

This is not only to take advantage of the fact that there's no atmosphere between SDO, the moon and the sun to spoil the crispness of the images, but also to show off the powerful M6-class solar flare that goes off and the immense coronal mass ejection that blasts off into space, right after the moon finishes its transit.

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If you're interested in seeing more views of this, you can check it out on the SDO website (click here). Set the start and finish dates to 2014-01-30 13:30:00 and 2014-01-30 15:30:00, choose your telescope (the first nine 'AIA' options show it), and click submit!

The solar flare and coronal mass ejection weren't Earth-directed, but spaceweather.com reports it as a "potentially significant event", meaning that it could still cause a geomagnetic storm over the next few days and ramp up the Northern Lights.

(Image and video courtesy: NASA)

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