Lunar Transit from Solar Dynamics Observatory (2010)
-
- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
Just as we do on Earth, the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite periodically crosses the Moon's shadow and experiences a solar eclipse. During the eclipse witnessed by SDO on October 7, 2010, the southern hemisphere of the Moon was silhouetted against the solar disk, revealing some especially prominent mountain peaks near the Moon's south pole. By using elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to visualize the Moon from SDO's point of view, it's possible to identify these peaks. Although all of these are well-known features, all but one of them have no official names. The following list corresponds to the labels in the animation, from left to right.
- In his 1954 sketch of the lunar south pole, astronomer Ewen Whitaker labeled this feature "M3." It's a mountain about halfway between the craters Cabeus and Drygalski, at 83.2°S 68°W.
- Whitaker's "M1," a mountain on the northern rim of Cabeus, 83.4°S 33°W.
- A mountain on the southern rim of Malapert crater, about halfway between the centers of Malapert and Haworth. Whitaker labels this Malapert Alpha. It's also known as Mons Malapert or Malapert Peak. 85.8°S 0°E.
- Labeled Leibnitz Beta by Whitaker and now officially named Mons Mouton, this is part of the highlands adjacent to the northern rim of Nobile crater. 84°S 37°E. Part of the Leibnitz mountain range first identified by Johann Schröter in the late 1700s, unrelated to Leibnitz Crater on the lunar far side.
- A mountain near Amundsen crater, on the western (Earthward) rim of Hédervári crater, 82.2°S 75°E. Whitaker tentatively labels this Leibnitz Epsilon in his sketch.
The Moon visualization uses the latest albedo and elevation maps from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
The southern limb of the Moon transits across the Sun in this sequence of images from Solar Dynamics Observatory on October 7, 2010. Five peaks near the lunar south pole, visible in silhouette, are identified. A visualization of the Moon using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data is precisely aligned with the SDO image, then rotated to show these five peaks on a false-color global elevation map.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
The complete solar eclipse as photographed by SDO over a span of two hours on October 7. The sequence runs from 10:40 to 12:39 Universal Time (6:40 to 8:39 Eastern Daylight Time). The 3840 x 2160 frame set in this group is at the original SDO image resolution but has been cropped to a 16:9 frame aspect.
For More Information
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
-
Animators
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
-
Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Datasets used in this visualization
-
SDO AIA 171 (171 Filter)
ID: 680This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
DE421 (JPL DE421)
ID: 752Planetary ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See all pages that use this dataset -
LRO DEM (Digital Elevation Map)
ID: 653 -
LRO
ID: 212
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
-
-
ID: 12688 Produced Video
SDO's View of the August 21 Solar Eclipse
Read moreA movie of the Aug 21, 2017 lunar transit as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO.) The Sun appears in visible light, and 171 ångstrom extreme ultraviolet light. The movie shows the Sun moving a bit because SDO has a hard time keeping the Sun centered in the image during a transit, because the Moon blocks so much light. The fine guidance systems on the SDO instruments need to see the whole Sun in order keep the images centered from exposure to exposure. Once the transit was over, the fine guidance systems started back up, once again providing steady images of the Sun.Credit: NASA/SDOWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel. || SDO_Eclipse_Transit_Still.jpg (3840x2160) [1.4 MB] || SDO_Eclipse_Transit_Still_searchweb.png (320x180) [70.6 KB] || SDO_Eclipse_Transit_Still_thm.png (80x40) [5.5 KB] || 12688_SDO_Eclipse_Transit_H264_1080.mov (1920x1080) [126.4 MB] || 12688_SDO_Eclipse_Transit_H264_1080.webm (1920x1080) [4.6 MB] || 12688_SDO_Eclipse_Transit_ProRes_3840x2160_2997.mov (3840x2160) [2.7 GB] || 12688_SDO_Eclipse_Transit_H264_best_3840x2160_2997.mov (3840x2160) [378.1 MB] ||
-
ID: 11291 Produced Video
The Moon and the Sun: Two NASA Missions Join Their Images
Read moreTwo or three times a year, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory observes the moon traveling across the sun, blocking its view. While this obscures solar observations for a short while, it offers the chance for an interesting view of the shadow of the moon. The moon’s crisp horizon can be seen up against the sun, since the moon does not have an atmosphere. (At other times of the year, when Earth blocks SDO’s view, the Earth’s horizon looks fuzzy due to its atmosphere.) If one looks closely at such a crisp border, the features of the moon’s topography are visible, as is the case in this image from Oct. 7, 2010. This recently inspired two NASA visualizers to overlay a 3-dimensional model of the moon based on data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter into the shadow of the SDO image. Such a task is fairly tricky, as the visualizers — Scott Wiessinger who typically works with the SDO imagery and Ernie Wright who works with the LRO imagery — had to precisely match up data from the correct time and viewpoint for the two separate instruments. The end result is an awe-inspiring image of the sun and the moon. To start the process, the visualizers took the viewing position and time from the SDO image. This information was dropped into an LRO model that can produce the exact view of the moon from anywhere, at any time, by incorporating 6 billion individual measurements of the moon’s surface height from LRO’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument. The model had to take many factors into consideration, including not only SDO’s distance and viewing angle, but also the moon’s rotation and constant motion. Wright used animation software to wrap the elevation and appearance map around a sphere to simulate the moon. The two images were put together and the overlay was exact. The mountains and valleys on the horizon of the LRO picture fit right into the shadows seen by SDO. In its own way, this served as a kind of calibration of data. It means that the SDO data on its position and time is highly accurate and that the LRO models, too, are able to accurately provide images of what’s happening at any given moment in time. And of course, the whole exercise provides for a beautiful picture. ||
-