Starship Asterisk*

Lunar View, Solar Eclipse

Explanation: Orbiting above the lunar nearside on August 21, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter turned to look back on a bright, Full Earth. As anticipated its Narrow Angle Camera scanned this sharp view of our fair planet, catching the shadow of the Moon racing along a path across the United States at about 1,500 miles per hour. In fact, the dark lunar shadow is centered over Hopkinsville, Kentucky at 1:25:30 Central Daylight Time. From there, the New Moon blocked the Sun high in clear skies for about 2 minutes and 40 seconds in a total solar eclipse.

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Terrific!!!

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APOD today also offers a detailed, in context image of the remnants of TS Harvey approaching the Yucatan Peninsula, which later reformed, strengthened to a Cat. 4 hurricane, and flooded Houston. Wow!

Much has been made of the hexagon cloud formation at Saturn's north pole. Seems there is a similar formation evident at our north pole in this photo.

Cool! You can even see the thunderclouds building right above where I was viewing the eclipse!

LROC Captures Solar Eclipse As Seen from Moon
Arizona State University | 2017 Aug 30

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter system of three cameras executes precision maneuver for photo of sun's shadow around Nashville

During the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, ASU’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) captured an image of the moon’s shadow over a large region of the United States, centered just north of Nashville, Tennessee. ...

That's us in the upper left of the umbra. The shadow is much bigger than the true umbra because it also includes the deep penumbra as well.

climber wrote:Much has been made of the hexagon cloud formation at Saturn's north pole. Seems there is a similar formation evident at our north pole in this photo.

The structure I presume you're looking at is nowhere near the north pole, however. It appears to be centered at about 66° N. (You can't see the north pole from this view.)

Shouldn't Hurricane Harvey be visible in this picture too? It was officially declared a hurricane on the 17th and we can see all the way to the African coast here.

Frantz wrote:Shouldn't Hurricane Harvey be visible in this picture too? It was officially declared a hurricane on the 17th and we can see all the way to the African coast here.

It was declared a tropical storm on the 17th, and downgraded to a tropical depression two days later, and shortly after that to a tropical wave. It was not given hurricane status until the 24th. On the day of the eclipse, when this image was made, the tropical wave was reconsolidating, and can be seen along the eastern edge of the Yucatan peninsula.

the dark shape in the shadow must be the RB57

The apparent hexagon appears to be over northern Hudson Bay. I can see clearly the upper Ungava Peninsula and the lower portion of Baffin Island.

What is mysterious (besides the Moon's shadow) is the large white cloud formation off the California coast. (See the high definition version for a clearer look) Just about to the west of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara area, there appears to be a shape that looks remarkably like an eyeball and eyebrow, gazing over to the right as if it is God's eye watching the eclipse shadow. What an amazing cloud formation just happens to be captured by the LRO!