Last Wednesday, Earth was wowed by a lovely cosmic alignment a lunar eclipse. For cloud-free regions of the globe, skywatchers observed our moon gradually fall into Earths shadow, eventually transforming from a bright disk into an ominous-looking red glow. Known as a lunar eclipse, the event wasnt only a show for Earthlings to enjoy a certain little space robot was observing from 66 million miles away.

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NASAs MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) mission is currently in orbit around our solar systems smallest planet and, on Oct. 6, mission controllers commanded the probe to gaze Earthward. As can be seen in the video below, our planets natural satellite orbited behind the Earth, falling into its shadow:

From Mercury, the Earth and moon normally appear as if they were two very bright stars, said planetary scientist Hari Nair, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Md. During a lunar eclipse, the moon seems to disappear during its passage through the Earths shadow, as shown in the movie.

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The video is composed of 31 MESSENGER observations of the Earth-moon system taken from 5:18 a.m. to 6:18 a.m. EDT on Oct. 8. The animation starts just before the moon slips into the darkest part of the Earths shadow (umbra). To improve clarity in the video, mission scientists increased brightness of Earth and moon, which are only 40 pixels apart in the images attained by MESSENGERs narrow-angle camera.

News source: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Video source: Jason Major, Lights In The Dark

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NASA Spacecraft Watched the Lunar Eclipse from Mercury