An awe-inspiring new picture has captured the second a tiny and unusually vibrant Mars rose from behind the moon’s crater-covered floor throughout a latest eclipse.
The Purple Planet was quickly obscured from Earth’s view by the passing moon throughout an occasion often called a lunar occultation, which happens roughly twice a yr and lasts for round an hour. Nonetheless, the Dec. 7 eclipse proved particularly dramatic as a result of Mars was at opposition, that means Earth was immediately between it and the sun, which makes the planet seem unusually shiny within the night sky, in keeping with Dwell Science’s sister website Space.com (opens in new tab).Â
The brand new picture was captured by skilled astrophotographer and Arizona resident Andrew McCarthy (opens in new tab), who shared the gorgeous shot on Twitter (opens in new tab).Â
“That is the second Mars peeked out from behind our moon,” McCarthy wrote. “Seeing one other planet rising on the horizon of our moon was such a surreal expertise.”Â
Associated: Mars may be slowly ripping its largest moon apart (opens in new tab)
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Mars’ uncommon brightness meant that the latest eclipse was clearly seen from Earth’s floor, and many individuals captured images and videos of the Red Planet disappearing or reappearing from behind the moon. Nonetheless, “capturing an in depth picture of this occasion was an actual problem,” McCarthy informed Dwell Science.
To amass his ultra-detailed picture, McCarthy utilized an astrophotography method often called “fortunate imaging,” which entails taking fast bursts of tens, a whole lot or hundreds of pictures and stacking the very best ones on high of one another to kind a single, detailed picture. Because of the velocity the moon travels, McCarthy had a window of simply 10 seconds to take his photos to keep away from the lunar floor changing into blurred within the closing image. Throughout this transient window, he took round 2,000 particular person photos.Â
“Total it is probably the most tough photographs I’ve ever captured,” McCarthy stated. However it is usually “certainly one of my favourite moments since starting this passion.”
On Nov. 16, the unmanned Orion capsule from NASA’s Artemis I mission captured the same picture of Earth disappearing behind the lunar surface (opens in new tab) because the spacecraft flew previous the moon and into orbit across the satellite.
In September, McCarthy additionally captured a surprising time-lapse picture of a 1 million-mile-long (1.6 million kilometers) plume of plasma erupting from the surface of the sun (opens in new tab) throughout a coronal mass ejection.Â
Initially printed on LiveScience.com (opens in new tab).
