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May 21, 2022

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured lunar eclipse from space

Posted by in category: space

This week’s lunar eclipse wasn’t only observed from the ground and from the International Space Station — it was also observed from 64 million miles (100 million kilometers) away from Earth by the Lucy spacecraft. Lucy, which is an uncrewed craft from NASA and the Southwest Research Institute on its way to study the Trojan asteroids in the orbit of Jupiter, got a view of the lunar eclipse on May 15 and was able to snap images over a period of three hours which have been turned into a time-lapse video:

The images were taken using Lucy’s L’LORRI instrument which captures high-resolution black and white images. It took 86 images in total which were combined together to create the time-lapse.

Even though Lucy is far away from Earth, the instrument was sensitive enough to be able to view the moon as it passed into the Earth’s shadow and was hidden in darkness for a short time.

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