Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander successfully captured images overnight of a total solar eclipse from the moon — a first for the commercial space industry.
These are not to be confused with the images you may have seen captured overnight of the total lunar eclipse back here on Earth.
That's because when the Earth began to move between the sun and the moon last night, it caused a shadow to be cast on the lunar surface ... meaning the Earth experienced a total lunar eclipse, and the moon experienced the opposite: a total solar eclipse.
The solar eclipse lasted nearly five hours, starting at 12 a.m. CST and ending around 4:52 a.m. at the Blue Ghost's landing site in the Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located on the moon’s near side (the side you can see from Earth). Totality lasted just over 2 hours, beginning at 1:18 a.m.
The first image captured by the Blue Ghost was taken around 12:30 a.m., just as the as Earth began to block the sun. A glowing ring of light can be seen in the reflection of the lander's solar panel.
A string of images, taken during totality around 2:30 a.m., appears to show the lunar surface turning red.
The red hue "is the result of sunlight refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere as the sun is blocked by our planet, casting a shadow on the lunar surface," according to Firefly.
Another image, taken around 3:30 a.m., shows the lunar lander capturing a "diamond ring effect," as the sun prepared to emerge from totality behind Earth.
Firefly said it expects to release more images of the total solar eclipse in the coming days.
The Blue Ghost is expected to continue its operations on the lunar surface through March 16 — at which point it will have successfully been on the moon for one whole lunar day, or approximately 14 Earth days.
