Black Moon solar eclipse looks otherworldly in stunning images

News
By
published

Space and land views showed the moon taking a bite out of the sun on April 30.

A rare solar eclipse Saturday (April 30) stunned viewers across Antarctica, the southern tip of South America, and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

While much of the event took place in remote areas, live cameras on Earth and satellites in space allowed people around the world to witness the moon blocking as much as 64% of the sun. The eclipse happened during a Black Moon, which is the second new moon in a single month. 

Heliophysicist C. Alex Young, the associate director for science in the heliophysics science division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, broadcast several screenshots of a timeanddate.com livestream, which show a gorgeous, seemingly distorted sun with a bite taken out of it.

The eclipse was broadcast from numerous locations across the viewing area, and as Young said in one of his tweets, there are "bonus sunspots" available to look at after an explosive month from our sun. The sun generated several X-class (very strong) flares as it slowly moves toward its peak of solar activity in 2025.

Related: Here's a step-by-step guide for making your own solar eclipse viewer.

A livestream from TimeandDate.com captured this stunning view of a solar eclipse in Argentina on April 30, 2022. (Image credit: TimeandDate.com / Screenshot by C. Alex Young @TheSunToday)

The eclipse was also visible from space via a satellite named GOES-16 (GOES-R when it launched in 2016). The satellite charts lightning, severe storms and solar activity on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

While NOAA's Twitter feed was not active over the weekend, the satellite broadcasts footage via the GOES Image Viewer website and attentive viewers caught views of the eclipse near real-time from space.

NASA said at least part of the eclipse was visible "in Chile, Argentina, most of Uruguay, western Paraguay, southwestern Bolivia, southeastern Peru, and a small area of southwestern Brazil." (That's assuming clear skies.)

Some well-known cities or regions with views of the eclipse included Buenos Aires (Argentina), the Falkland Islands (United Kingdom), Machu Picchu Base (Peru), Montevideo (Uruguay) and Santiago (Chile), according to Unitarium.com. Also, at least one cruise was active in the eclipsing region via EclipseTours.com.

Related Stories

—Dazzling photos of the solar eclipse from Antarctica

—'Ring of fire' solar eclipse wows skywatchers (Photos)

—How to make a solar eclipse viewer: Step-by-step photo guide

The next solar eclipse, also a partial one, will occur on Oct. 25. It will be visible from Europe, northeast Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, according to NASA. There will be no total solar eclipses this year.

Editor's Note: If you snap an amazing solar eclipse photo and would like to share it with Live Science readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to community@livescience.com.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. 

TOPICS
Elizabeth Howell
Elizabeth Howell
Live Science Contributor
Elizabeth Howell is a regular contributor to Live Science and Space.com, along with several other science publications. She is one of a handful of Canadian reporters who specializes in space reporting. Elizabeth has a Bachelor of Journalism, Science Concentration at Carleton University (Canada) and an M.Sc. Space Studies (distance) at the University of North Dakota. Elizabeth became a full-time freelancer after earning her M.Sc. in 2012. She reported on three space shuttle launches in person and once spent two weeks in an isolated Utah facility pretending to be a Martian.