A British satellite orbiting Earth has sent back stunning images in 4K quality of the total solar eclipse on April 8.
They come after NASA’s incredible images of the moon’s shadow on Earth taken from the International Space Station, some of the best photos of the total solar eclipse.
As well as multiple images on its X feed (where Elon Musk also published a similar eclipse video from a Starlink satellite), Sen published this exquisite video of the eclipse on YouTube:
Dark Shadow
Sen—a company with one satellite in orbit, called ETV-A1—captured multiple views of the moon’s umbra, its dark central shadow, as it traveled 9,200 miles across the Earth’s surface in three hours and 17 minutes.
That dark shadow is, on Earth, called the path of totality, which was around 115 miles wide as it crossed the planet. Everyone within that moving oval shadow experiencing totality—darkness in the day and the chance to see, in clear skies, the sun’s corona.
Low Earth Orbit
Sen’s ETV-A1 is in low-Earth orbit, about 318 miles above Earth, and takes around 90 minutes to complete one orbit. It was launched into orbit on January 13, 2022, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It’s planned to be the first of many, with Sen planning a constellation of satellites from 2025.
We can expect a lot more 4Kspace videos from Sen, which launched a 4K camera to the ISS on March 21.
Three Unique Views
The company is expected to begin live-streaming views of Earth from the ISS this year. Its “SpaceTV-1” camera will provide three 4K camera views:
A wide-angle panoramic of Earth’s horizon.
A straight-down view of Earth measuring about 240 km x 180 km (about 60m per pixel).
A forward-facing view of a docking port on the ISS to watch spacecraft come and go.
At least one camera will be live-streamed continuously and be freely accessible to everyone at Sen.com or from the company’s app, which for now is only available on Apple’s App Store (though a Google Play app is planned).
The Next Eclipse
If you want to see another total solar eclipse then consider traveling to Europe on August 12, 2026, when mainland Europe’s first total solar eclipse since 1999 will see an 83-190-mile-wide moon shadow move from remote Russian Siberia to Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Around 15 million people live within the path, unlike the 42 million under the shadow in Mexico, the U.S, and Canada on April 8.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
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