As the world prepares to witness a Total Solar Eclipse, a photograph captured from the now-decommissioned Mir space station shows a ghostly appearance as seen from space.
This image captured on August 11, 1999 shows the Moon’s shadow casting a dark circle over Earth, a phenomenon that Nasa said raced across our planet’s surface at a staggering speed of nearly 2000 kilometers per hour.
A total solar eclipse is a condition when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth and completely blocks the Sun’s disk, casting a huge shadow on the surface.
This solar eclipse will be characterised by a phenomenon known as totality – a condition when viewers may be able to see the chromosphere (a region of the solar atmosphere, appearing as the thin circle of pink around the Moon) along with the corona.
The photograph recorded one of the last significant event as seen from the Mir space station before its controlled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in 2001, which reveals the vastness and beauty of the solar eclipse in a way few have ever witnessed.
Observers located directly beneath this shadowy region experienced the totality of the eclipse, where the Moon completely obscured the Sun, plunging them into daytime darkness.
Meanwhile, those situated near the edges of the shadow observed a partial eclipse, where only a segment of the Sun was hidden behind the Moon.
Adding to the spectacle, two bright points emerge in the upper left corner of the image, believed to be the planets Jupiter and Saturn, standing as silent witnesses to the cosmic event.
The total solar eclipse will occur on April 8, 2024, and will be the last total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States until 2044.
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