Search the RAMMB website
On 14 December 2020, the only total solar eclipse of the year occurred. The path of totality stretched from the southeast Pacific Ocean, west of Chile, to the southeast Atlantic Ocean, west of South Africa. During the first two daytime overpasses across the path of totality (~14:40 UTC and ~16:20 UTC), the center of the Moon’s shadow was too far west to be observed by Suomi-NPP and, on subsequent overpasses of the region, the center of Moon’s shadow was too far east. However, with NOAA-20 a half-orbit ahead of S-NPP, it was in the right place at the right time to observe the eclipse off the coast of Argentina at ~17:13 UTC. An example image showing the Day Land Cloud RGB from VIIRS is shown below. The Moon’s shadow is visible near the center of the image, and the distinct boundary between the dark and light clouds indicates the edge of the VIIRS swath during the eclipse overpass. The brighter clouds in the upper-left corner of the image were observed by S-NPP VIIRS at ~16:20 UTC. The east coast of South America is visible on the left side of the image. This image was saved from CIRA’s Polar SLIDER, a website for the display of global, full resolution VIIRS imagery in near-realtime. The URL for Polar SLIDER is: https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=jpss (POC: Curtis Seaman, CIRA, curtis.seaman@colostate.edu)