NASA satellite shows lunar eclipse as seen from Mercury

The
moon is seen during a lunar eclipse over Cairo, Egypt July 27,
2018.
REUTERS/Amr Abdallah
Dalsh

• The longest total lunar
  eclipse of the century happened last week, on July
  27.
• Although the event looked stunning from many parts of
  Earth, a 2014 video from NASA’s Messenger satellite reveals
  what the event would have looked like
  from Mercury.

On the night of July 27 and the early morning hours of July
28, sky-watchers across the Eastern Hemisphere were treated to
the 
longest
lunar eclipse
 
of the 21st
century.

A lunar
eclipse occurs when the sun, Earth, and moon are
directly aligned, and the moon’s orbit brings it into Earth’s
shadow. The moon passes through the darkest region of Earth’s
shadow, known as the umbra, which gives the moon a reddish sheen
because of the way the sun’s light gets refracted by Earth’s
atmosphere.

The event captivated people on Earth, who took

stunning photos of the “blood moon” — a term that comes from
the red-orange hue the moon takes on during a lunar
eclipse.

German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who is currently onboard
the International Space Station, even watched and
photographed the eclipse from his temporary home
about 250 miles above
Earth.

From other vantage points in our solar system, the eclipse
would also look remarkable. If someone were standing on the
moon during a lunar eclipse,
the Earth would appear to be surrounded by a bright-red ring of
fire.

And NASA’s Messenger satellite, which orbited Mercury
between 2011 and 2015, provided remarkable footage of what lunar
eclipses look like from our solar system’s innermost
planet.

NASA satellites orbiting distant planets occasionally train
their cameras on the moon during these celestial events, and
Messenger did so during a 
2014 lunar eclipse.
From there, here’s what it looked like:

In this timelapse, which was created from 31 images
taken two minutes apart, the brighter light is Earth, and
the smaller one is the moon. Once the moon is fully in Earth’s
shadow, it seems to disappear completely.

Messenger was the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury, but its
mission came to an end when NASA intentionally crashed the
satellite into the planet in April 2015. 

If you missed the most recent lunar eclipse, you may get another
chance to see one on January 20-21, 2019.