The Great American Eclipse: What it Looked Like from Space
Leading up to the Great American Eclipse, a number of Planet employees traveled to the path of totality to view the eclipse in-person on the ground. We travelled to Oregon, Idaho, Missouri, Southern Illinois and elsewhere to witness the breathtaking natural phenomenon. When we came back to the office, we all giddily dug into Planet Explorer Beta to see what eclipse imagery our orbiting constellation of satellites collected.
Take a look at some of our favorite eclipse shots:
In the week leading up to the eclipse, an estimated 30,000 people descended on a field just northeast of Redmond, Oregon to participate in the Oregon Eclipse Festival— a week-long event, complete with musical acts and art installations, which culminated in an eclipse viewing. In the gif to the left we can see two and half months of festival preparations to the area. We see newly dug service roads spread across the prairie day-by-day; a pedestrian bridge slowly snake across the lake; and tents and temporary structures explode across the field on August 15.
On August 21, tons of satellites in space snapped pictures of Earth during the eclipse. Some of the most striking imagery was captured from far away in high-altitude orbits. NASA’s DSCOVR climate monitoring satellite captured this series of images showing the moon’s shadow traveling eastward across the United States:
Pretty cool.
When we look at higher resolution data captured by satellites in Low Earth Orbit, we get a rare close-up look at Earth shrouded in darkness. Planet’s satellites in Sun Synchronous Orbit have a morning passing time, meaning they pass over the same place on Earth every day at the same time each morning. On August 21, as the moon’s shadow traveled across the Western United States, our satellites were in prime position to capture pictures of the morning’s eclipse.
If Planet’s Doves were to capture areas during minutes of totality, they wouldn’t see much with Red-Green-Blue (RGB) data — mostly black and brown pixels, and some dim clouds. But in the moments before and after totality, you can collect some striking satellite imagery. Take a look at Casper Wyoming, captured at at 11:11am MDT—about 30 minutes before totality:
Here’s a look at the wider Casper area in Planet Explorer Beta:
Denver, Colorado, while not in the path of totality, experienced change, too. Here are some shots of downtown Denver, captured at 11:06am MDT—40 minutes before maximum eclipse:
Our monitoring constellation collected a large amount of imagery of other areas in the Western United States during the eclipse. If you hop into Planet Explorer Beta, and pan around, odds are, you’ll find some interesting eclipse imagery of your own.
UPDATE September 3, 2017: We’ve just published imagery of the moon’s shadow crossing Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. Head over to our website to view the whole clip.
