A new video shows the moon trip the light fantastic around in a heavenly version of do - si - doing across the Sun , stopping and ostensibly retracing its step in the other direction .
Except that ’s sort of impossible .
agree to NASA ’s Solar Dynamics Observatory ( SDO ) , the Moon ’s maneuvering can be excuse by the relative speeds and positions of the Moon , the Sun , and the SDO that , when perfectly align , make the trippy optical magic trick ring “ retreat motion ” . Here , a celestial target bet like it is moving backward because of the path that various objects around it move at dissimilar speeds and points in the orbit .
When a heavenly body passes between a larger body ( in this case , the Sun ) and an observer ( here , the SDO ) , it produce what astronomers call a transit . The first part of this last transit was captured as the Moon moved from pass on to right hand . At a rate of 3 kilometers ( 1.9 mi ) per second , the SDO moved perpendicular to the Sun - Earth Line to eclipse the Moon , which move at 1 kilometer ( 0.6 miles ) per secondly . In the second part of the transit , the Moon appeared to break and rewind . This occur as the SDO entered the dusk part of its orbit and started to move away from the Moon , almost parallel to the tail that it was casting through space . When the moon began to move quicker than the SDO , it catch up with it and thus appeared to move in the opposite direction .
SDO often conquer the Moon moving in dissimilar management during lunar transportation , but staring shape this time gave the dance legerdemain . Altogether , the case hold out a total of four hours from 5 phase modulation until 9:07pm EST . At its peak , the Moon covered 82 pct of the Sun ’s face .
Last September , SDO catch two lunar transit , when the Moon passed in front of the Sun and the Moon appeared to move in one direction and switch back to cross the Moon again . This too was base on the SDO ’s perspective as the spacecraft ’s field caught up and passed the Moon during the first transportation .
SDO is an initiative launched by NASA to sympathise how solar variations influence life-time on Earth and our technological systems .
