You probably didn’t hear or see this eclipse, you are not alone,  no one on earth has eye witnessed  it. It actually happened earlier this month but wasn’t visible anywhere on Earth according to many space agencies sources. However, a Japanese space probe around the moon received amazing high definition video of the sun being blocked by earth, producing a “diamond ring” eclipse.

February 9, 2008 the Kaguya, or Selene probe was traveling from dark to the light side of the moon, and when the sun rose there was just a thin ring surrounding darkness, this incident  was captured on video and broadcasted on the Japanese aerospace exploration agency JAXA site.

This is part of the agency’s press release issued after taken the images and the video

A penumbral lunar eclipse is a phenomenon in which the Sun, Earth and Moon line up in tandem, hence the Moon is in the Earth’s penumbra, or, when you look from the Moon, the Sun is partially covered by the Earth (partial eclipse.) During this phenomenon, the volume of sunlight to the Moon decreases, and the Moon’s surface looks darker when you look at the Moon from the Earth. The KAGUYA, which circles around the Moon on its polar orbit, can witness this phenomenon only twice a year at most, thus it was very valuable to capture the moving images of the phenomenon from the KAGUYA.

In the video, only a small semi-circle is visible at first as the sun rises over the horizon.