Although the Lucy spacecraft dedicated to asteroid exploration is 64 million miles (100 million kilometers) away from us, NASA took the initiative to share the images of the distant lunar eclipse it photographed in May The photos of the moon's shadow returned by the Lucy probe over the weekend give us a very different look than those from earth and the international space station, the agency said in a statement on Friday
Imagination of Lucy probe flying over asteroid Patroclus and its companion menoetius (from NASA)
At 100 million kilometers away, the distance between the earth and the moon is only 0.2 ° - similar to looking at a car tail light a quarter of a mile (400 meters).
In a 15 second video, the Southwest Research Institute ([SwRI], which led the mission( https://www.swri.org/press-release/swri-led-lucy-mission-observes-total-lunar-eclipse ) ) Shared the delayed photography showing the first half of the solar eclipse.
The earth on the left side of the picture looks like a rotating celestial body in the shape of water droplets. The image of the moon on the right side of the picture is gradually weak to disappear into the dark.
SwRIled Lucy Mission Observes a Total Lunar Eclipse（via）
It is reported that the delay picture is recorded by the high-resolution black-and-white camera mounted on Lucy detector through 86 exposures (about 3 hours).
"Everyone was excited when the team realized the opportunity to observe the eclipse during instrument calibration," lead researcher Hal Levison said in a statement.
However, the primary task of the Lucy probe is to innovate our early understanding of the origin of the solar system through the study of Trojan asteroids.