Full Lunar Eclipse Feb 20/21 / Earth picture Options

[bjb]

I see we have a full lunar eclipse coming on Feb 20/21 (depending where you live).

I know that even during a full eclipse the Moon is still visible with a coppery hue, due to the refraction of light around the Earth.

Now that we have a bunch of probes in orbit of the Moon, is there any plan / is it possible to take an image of the Earth from the Moon during totality? (or has this already been done?)

I would think that a picture of the Earth surrounded by a red ring would be amazing!

[scalbers]

With several further refinements, here is now an animation of the eclipse seen from the moon:



To deal with the brightness range, during the partial eclipse and shallow total eclipse (as seen from this point on the moon) the brightness is scaled so that 255 is the surface brightness of the center of the sun. When we are more inside the edge of the umbra the brightness is scaled up by a factor of 10.

In reality the red ring would be broken up by clouds so here is a movie that shows this with some idealized cloud locations. The handling of solar limb darkening is also improved. Extra frames are added near the end of the total eclipse.



The solar corona is relatively much dimmer than the rest of the scene being shown. It seems it would barely register more than a count or two unless the brightness scale is cranked up further. Unlike the view of a solar eclipse and diamond ring effect from the Earth, there is less opportunity to view the inner corona from the moon due to the large size of the Earth's silhouette. Thus the diamond ring seen from the moon is essentially the refracted light passing through the thin layer of the Earth's atmosphere.

I like to view these animations full screen with the monitor brightness turned up. The view might resemble wearing sunglasses or a solar filter depending on the stage of the eclipse. Even in deep totality the surface brightness could be fairly bright in spots, kind of like a sunset on Earth. I'm presently assuming clean air so adding tropospheric aerosols may dim things a bit more when we're in deep totality.

(UPDATED Jan 2, 2016)