The Sun and Moon decided to put on a show Thursday — but only for the lucky few with good seats, in space.
In what is known as a lunar transit, the Moon passed between NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Sun, giving the observatory a view of a partial solar eclipse only visible from space.
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Lunar transits like this happen two or three times a year, but Thursday's was particularly special. According to SDO's mission blog, the entire eclipse lasted two and half hours — the longest lunar transit thus far in the SDO mission.
SDO is the first mission to be launched as a part of NASA's Living With a Star Program, a program designed to research the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth and help scientists understand the Sun's influence on Earth. The observatory was launched on Feb. 11, 2010 from Cape Canaveral.
If you feel like you missed out on this solar spectacle, both Spaceweather created an animated time lapse and NASA has provided a video of the solar eclipse, showing the moon covering as much as 90 percent of the sun at the eclipse's maximum.
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