Is it possible to view from the spacecraft the moon ecclipsing the earth ? Do we have a photo of this ?

Question

It can be understood that to view the moon ecclipsing the earth, one has to be in space. Is there any possibility of viewing this ecclipse atleast partially ?

Answer 1

Yes, and here is the picture

http://blogs.dasmirnov.net/media/eclipse99mir.jpg

Answer 2

This all depends on exactly what you mean. Technically, an object is eclipsed when it passes into the shadow of another object. A lunar eclipse, for example, occurs when the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow. In proper terms, what is generally called a solar eclipse, when the Moon passes in front of the Sun, is actually an occultation of the Sun by the Moon. SInce the Moon is casting its shadow on the Earth we are in a sense the ones actually being eclipsed. Therefore, one can view the Moon eclipsing the Earth from here. It has also been photographed from orbit, as a previous response has shown.

Assuming what you mean is observing the Moon passing in front of the Earth and blocking the view of it, yes in a sense that has been photographed. The furthest man has ever gone behind the Moon is less than a hundred miles. That means the Moon looks vast and the Earth looks tiny, so what you really get is an image of earth setting below the lunar limb or rising over it. In order to see the Moon passing in front of the Earth with the two objects appearing to have similar sizes, you have to get much further beyond the Moon than any manned spacecraft has been (with a bit of trignometry it turns out you need to be about 150,000km beyond the Moon to be able to loko back and see Earth and Moon the same size). A number of unmanned probes have of course gone far enough out to potentially take such images, but as far as I know none have been correctly aligned to do so.

Answer 3

You don't have to be in space to see an earth eclipse, it's just called a solar eclipse when you're on earth :)

Answer 4

no it will be very dark since nothing is there to reflect light