WISE saw the solar eclipse
WISE is still being eclipsed by the Earth, an effect known as night for those of us living on Earth, but on 11 July 2010 WISE also got eclipsed by the Moon. The graph below shows the output of a coarse Sun sensor (basically a solar cell) falling rapidly as the sunlight powering WISE was cutoff by the Earth’s limb, then rising rapidly 21 minutes later as the eclipse by the Earth ended. But the level stayed at about 30 percent of full sunlight for another 7 minutes due to the penumbra of the Moon. Of course the WISE telescope was looking 90 degrees away from the Sun and took no notice of the eclipse. I’m sure people on Easter Island had a more exciting view.
WISE Sun sensor output versus seconds since 1 Jan 2000.
