PHOTO OF THE DAY: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Captures 2024 Solar Eclipse Shadow
By NASA information center // April 17, 2024
three cameras comprise the LRO camera
(NASA) – NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse from hundreds of thousands of miles away.
The camera suite aboard the LRO usually retrieves high-resolution black-and-white images of the Moon’s surface; these images provide knowledge of polar illumination conditions, identify potential resources, and hazards, and enable safe landing site selection. To take an image of Earth, the LRO has to rapidly rotate to build up the image.
Three cameras comprise the LRO camera (LROC) suite: two Narrow-Angle Cameras (NAC) and one Wide Angle Camera. The Earth’s image with the shadow in it was acquired by one of the two narrow-angle cameras.
The LROC narrow-angle cameras are line scanner cameras: they only have one line of pixels, and images are built up line-by-line by the spacecraft’s motion as it orbits the Moon.
Acquiring an image of Earth requires the spacecraft to rapidly rotate to build up the image.
LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
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