ISS astronauts view Great American Eclipse from space
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The Moon's umbra as it crosses the United States on Aug. 21, 2017. The crew of the International Space Station was able to view the shadow during three back-to-back orbits. Photo Credit: NASA
On Aug. 21, 2017, millions of Americans witnessed the first total solar eclipse to cross North America from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts in 99 years. While much of the country experienced cloudy conditions, there were six people who saw the Moon's umbra from above the weather -- in space: The crew of the International Space Station.
With an orbital re-boost on Aug. 9, 2017, the space station was lined up to be able to cross the path of the eclipse three times. While none of those passed under the umbra, the Moon's full shadow, the outpost did travel into the penumbra, the area of partial shadow. The point of maximum eclipse for the six onboard was 84 percent.
Expedition 52 Flight Engineer and NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik took images of the eclipse while the other crew members, NASA's Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer, the European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy, observed and took pictures of the umbra touching the Earth.
While a large chuck of areas in the Midwest and some of the South had cloudy weather or worse, the western states of Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming had nearly perfect skies. It was in the latter state that NASA photographer Bill Ingalls ventured to capture the ISS traveling across the Sun as the moon was partially in front of the Sun as well.
Author side-note: Check out these photos of the eclipse taken by me, Derek Richardson, near Glenrock, Wyoming.
