On Tuesday, residents and tourists alike in Cairns, Australia had the privilege of viewing a solar eclipse starting at 3:35 p.m. EST, an event which was captured via live stream on the Slooh Space Camera.
While Slooh recorded a full solar eclipse from the ground, the European Space Agency's Proba-2 satellite collected imagary of the sun from space in the form of three separate partial eclipses.
Joe Zender, the Proba-2 mission manager, states: "The satellite also spent hours collecting data of the solar environment further away from the sun before and after the main eclipse event, providing context for the ground-based observations."
"Combining visible light observations with the extreme ultraviolet images from Proba-2 gives us a unique opportunity to access difficult-to-see regions of the sun at different wavelengths, during a rare event such as a total solar eclipse," he adds.
The full eclipse began over Australia, but was visible along a wide swath of regions as a partial eclipse over the New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific, South America, and Antarctica. The full eclipse reached its maximum at 5:12 p.m. EST, and ended at 6:48 p.m. EST 500 miles west of Chile.
Residents along Alaska and the West Coast had the best visibility of the even in North America, while the East Coast was unable to view the eclipse.
November will also host a penumbral lunar eclipse on November 28, which will kick off at 7:14 a.m. EST and last until 11:51 a.m. EST.
Looking forward, Space.com writes: "The peak of the sun's regular 11-year activity cycle, usually marked by increased sunspots, solar flares and magnetic bombardments from the sun here on Earth, is expected to arrive in early or mid 2013."
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