ESA releases images of the Moon’s shadow advancing during the total solar eclipse

The European Space Agency (ESA) released images this Thursday captured from space that show the movement of the Moon’s shadow during the total solar eclipse recorded on August 12.

The sequence was obtained by the Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite and allows for the observation of the Moon’s dark shadow advancing across the Earth’s surface as the astronomical phenomenon traveled over different areas of the North Atlantic.

Read more: An eclipse sweeps across North America and Europe before triumphing with its totality in Spain

The images also show how the lunar shadow ended up meeting the penumbra zone associated with the arrival of night over Europe, offering an unusual perspective of the eclipse from space.

On the Iberian Peninsula, the totality phase occurred approximately between 20:26 and 20:34, according to Central European Summer Time (CEST).

The observation made by the MTG-I1 allows us to appreciate the magnitude of the phenomenon beyond the images taken from the ground and evidences, from an orbital perspective, the rapid displacement of the shadow cast by the Moon onto our planet.

The eclipse of August 12 was followed from different regions of the North Atlantic and Europe, where millions of people were able to observe, to varying degrees, the passage of the Moon in front of the Sun.