The moon didn’t just put on a show for us here on Earth during the lunar eclipse yesterday: astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) also had a great view of the event. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shared a series of stunning images of the eclipse as seen from ISS on Twitter.
A partially eclipsed Moon playing hide-and-seek with our solar panel. / Eclissi parziale della luna che gioca a nascondino con il nostro pannello solare. 🌘 #lunareclipse2022 #BloodMoon #MissionMinerva pic.twitter.com/P7oYFcfTdA
— Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) May 16, 2022
One of the photos shows the lunar eclipse happening, framed between the blades of the space station’s solar panels and a massive blue expanse that is Earth. In another picture, the lunar eclipse is sandwiched between the blades of the solar panel. In all the images, you can see the shading of the moon’s surface caused by the shadow of the earth.
Yesterday’s lunar eclipse was special for many reasons. The first is that it was a full eclipse, which is a rare event by itself and the other is the fact that it coincided with the “supermoon,” which is when the full moon appears biggest in the sky because it is at its closes point to the earth in its orbit around Earth.
Cristoforetti also shared another image in a separate tweet showing just the moon juxtaposed against the darkness of space, peeking above the curvature of the Earth and its atmosphere which looks almost like a blue glow surrounding the planet.
Happy Monday from space! Were you lucky enough to be able to see the lunar eclipse last night? We were! / Buon lunedì dallo spazio! Avete avuto la fortuna di vedere l’eclissi lunare di ieri sera? Noi sì! 🌘#lunareclipse2022 #MissionMinerva #LunarEclipse pic.twitter.com/RKJ49L4YAX
— Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) May 16, 2022
Even though the total lunar eclipse wasn’t visible to stargazers from India, various sources livestreamed the event from many different locations around the world. But don’t worry if you missed it. Some of those livestreams are still available for viewing as recorded videos. You can also see some of the beautiful images of the eclipse clicked by photographers from different locations.
