A close-up look at SDO's view of the Moon, backlit by the Sun, showing mountains on the limb. . Image courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams. Edited by Jason Major. Click for a larger version on Jason's Flickr page.

May 3, 2011December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

SDO: The Moon Gets in My Way

Early today, the Solar Dynamics Observatory was able to observe the Moon coming in between the spacecraft and the Sun. If you look closely, you can actually see mountains on the Moon subtly backlit by the Sun’s atmosphere.

Cool!

The SDO science team says that not only is this amazing to see, but it actually allows them to “sharpen-up” the SDO images. The sharp edge of the lunar limb allows our team to measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescopes on board the spacecraft.

See a close-up image (processed by our own Jason Major) below.

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One Reply to “SDO: The Moon Gets in My Way”

Jason Major says:

May 3, 2011 at 8:53 PM

Detail view of the lunar limb: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightsinthedark/5685070374/in/photostream

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