On September 21, 2025, NOAA's GOES-19 satellite captured what may be the first natural solar eclipse recorded by a space-based coronagraph. While sky-watchers on Earth observed a partial solar eclipse, the satellite's Compact Coronagraph-1 (CCOR-1) had a unique view as the moon passed between the instrument and the sun. The resulting imagery showed the moon following a "strangely crooked path" across the sun.
This odd trajectory wasn't a cosmic anomaly but was likely caused by a scheduled "yaw-flip" maneuver of the GOES-19 spacecraft. This maneuver, designed to calibrate the satellite's attitude, or orientation in space, could have made the moon's otherwise straight path appear crooked in the processed imagery. The event was particularly notable because coronagraphs, like CCOR-1, are designed to create artificial eclipses using an occulting disk to block the sun's light and study its faint outer atmosphere, the corona. This time, however, the moon itself served as the occulting disk.