Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander continues to beam home incredible imagery from the surface of the moon.
Blue Ghost just sent back amazing photos of last night’s “Blood Moon” total lunar eclipse from its perch in Mare Crisium, or “Sea of Crises,” a vast basin on the northeastern region of the moon’s near side. Blue Ghost landed there on March 2 and has been sending us stunning photos and videos of its moon excursion ever since.
In these most recent photos, Blue Ghost captured Earth blocking the sun during the eclipse at around 4:30 a.m. EDT (0830 GMT) on March 14. As the sun began to peek around Earth, it formed a bright ring of light in the dark lunar skies. “Blue Ghost got her first diamond ring!” Firefly Aerospace announced in an update accompanying the photo.
Firefly Aerospace celebrated the milestone in the update, touting the new age of private moon landers that has begun over the last year.
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“This marks the first time in history a commercial company was actively operating on the moon and able to observe a total solar eclipse where the Earth blocks the sun and casts a shadow on the lunar surface,” the company wrote in the update. “This phenomenon occurred simultaneously as the lunar eclipse we witnessed on Earth.”
In another photo taken some four hours before the “diamond ring” photo, Blue Ghost witnessed the beginning stages of the eclipse. Many of the lander’s instruments and antennae can be seen in the photo alongside Blue Ghost’s solar panels.
As Firefly noted in that update, Blue Ghost witnessed a solar eclipse — Earth passing in front of the sun — while we here on Earth saw a lunar eclipse as Earth’s shadow passed over the moon.
Lunar eclipses occur when Earth, the sun and the moon line up so that our planet passes between the sun and the moon; that’s why viewers on the moon such as lunar landers see a solar eclipse while we see a lunar eclipse.
The “diamond ring” phenomenon can also be viewed from Earth during solar eclipses. This occurs as bright points of light appear when sunlight pokes through valleys and mountain ridges on the moon, just before or after the period of totality.
These aren’t the only diamond rings seen during total eclipses, however. During the total solar eclipse that swept across North America on April 8, 2024, Space.com’s own Josh Dinner used the historic occasion to present his own diamond ring as he proposed to his now-fiancée.
