June 17 (UPI) -- A European space agency created the first "artificial total solar eclipse" using a pair of satellites on Monday.
The space agency Proba-3 showed the first images of the Sun's outer atmosphere -- the solar corona. In its announcement, the agency said that this will help improve the understanding of the sun and its atmosphere.
A pair of spacecrafts was used, the Coronagraph and the Occulter. They flew 492 feet apart for several hours without any control from the ground to create an artificial total solar eclipse's orbit. The two satellites use an optical instrument to take photos of the sun's corona.
The agency's goal for this mission was to observe the sun's corona, which the agency said is important for studying solar wind and understanding coronal mass ejections.
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