Stereo Eclipse

A Lunar Eclipse of the sun...from space. Click on the link for a pic and a movie...

"The images have an alien quality," notes Guhathakurta. "It's not just the strange colors of the sun. Look at the size of the Moon; it's very odd." When we observe a lunar transit from Earth, the Moon appears to be the same size as the sun—a coincidence that produces intoxicatingly beautiful solar eclipses. The silhouette STEREO-B saw, on the other hand, was only a fraction of the sun's diameter. "It's like being in the wrong solar system."

The Moon seems small because of STEREO-B's location. The spacecraft circles the sun in an Earth-like orbit, but it lags behind Earth by one million miles. This means STEREO-B is 4.4 times further from the Moon than we are, and so the Moon looks 4.4 times smaller.