Another solar eclipse coming up for PROBA-2

Sun, 03/23/2025 - 21:20 — Elke D'Huys

The PROBA-2 team is preparing for the next eclipse, and it will be a spectacular one!

Upcoming March 29, the solar instruments onboard will observe their 35th eclipse. This March 29 eclipse will also be visible from the ground for parts of the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, Greenland, Europe, Northwest Africa, and northwestern Russia. In Brussels, the home base of the PROBA-2 Science Center, a partial eclipse will be visible around mid-day and will cover almost 35% of the solar diameter. The ground based instruments of the Royal Observatory of Belgium will have a front row seat and will broadcast live observations of the USET solar telescope (in case of fair weather) and the radio-instruments in Humain.

As rare as it is for solar instruments to have observed 35 eclipses, LYRA and SWAP will now experience their most spectacular one to date: a nearly total eclipse with over 99% of the solar disk covered by Moon! This is an indeed very rare occasion: during PROBA-2’s entire lifetime only the eclipses in February 2017 and December 2021 reached an occultation over 90%. We have much to look forward too!

Naturally, high-cadence observations are planned and the data will be processed as soon as they arrive on the ground. PROBA2 will also profit from its fast sun-sunchronous orbit to observe the event multiple times. Click here to see a simulation of the expected view of the eclipse from the SWAP telescope.

UPDATE: Due to a small technical issue with the PROBA-2 satellite, the SWAP and LYRA instruments switched off at the time of the greatest eclipse. Unfortunately the scientific data were lost. Luckily, due to the satellite's fast orbit around the Earth, the Moon passed a second time in the field of view, and an eclipse with a coverage of nearly 70 % was observed by SWAP. Click on the image below to enjoy the full movie.

LYRA observations

Unfortunately, due to the technical issue outlined above, the LYRA instrument was unavailable for several hours, resulting in a lack of data for the whole eclipse event, including the second transit of the spacecraft through the eclipse zone.

SWAP observations

We made high cadence observations of the occultations with SWAP and produced our typical sets of calibrated PNG images (with logos and timestamp, with timestamp only, and without logos or timestamp), as well as movies of the event. All movies and images of the eclipse are collected in dedicated directories on our

website. The event directory also contains a specially selected SWAP image to promote the eclipse. This is the image with the largest part of the Sun occulted by the Moon.

Data Use Policy

All PROBA2 images and movies used in outreach and the media should be credited to "ESA/ROB". Additional information about the terms of use for PROBA2 data is available on the PROBA2 website.

Contacting the PROBA2 Team

All requests for media comments, data assistance, or planning requests can be directed to the SWAP and LYRA teams via swap-lyra@lists.observatory.be .

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