By now, you must have seen the amazing images of the total eclipse that occurred last week. However, did you know this total eclipse was also seen from space?
When a total eclipse occurs on Earth, solar imagers in space usually only observe a partial eclipse, due to a different alignment between the Sun, the Moon and the spacecraft. However, on August 12, the ASPIICS coronagraph onboard Proba-3 was in just the right place at the right time!
ASPIICS is used to seeing eclipses, as that is the exact purpose of the Proba-3 mission: use a second spacecraft to occult the solar disk and create an artificial eclipse on demand. However, on August 12, the Moon joined the fun: as the two Proba-3 spacecraft were already aligned for eclipse observations, the Moon slid in between the spacecraft and the Sun, creating double eclipse and an even larger shadow in the ASPIICS observations.
Because the Proba-3 spacecraft take their eclipse observations at a height of 60,000 km, they were closer to the Moon than Earth at the time of observation. And so this unique double eclipse took much longer than totality on ground: 8 min and 40 sec to be exact.
Enjoy the movie here: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2026/08/A_double_eclipse_for_P...
