At first glance, this is just another image of Earth.
But look closely, and you will be able to make out Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft hiding in plain sight, covering parts of the Indonesian Archipelago to the right of the Indian Ocean’s vast expanse.
Still having trouble spotting it? Move the slider to the right, and the black-and-white spacecraft will pop up in the foreground.
While the pictured Coronagraph only has eyes for the Sun and its surrounding corona, the mission’s other spacecraft – the Occulter – uses a camera system to autonomously adjust its position relative to the Coronagraph.
The camera system consists of a wide-angle camera (WAC), tracking a set of flashing LED lights on the Coronagraph spacecraft, supplemented by a narrow-angle camera (NAC) that enables a more precise positioning.
In addition to enabling Proba-3’s formation flying operations and solar corona observations, the Occulter’s camera system provides us with stunning images of Earth when the angle is just right.
This image was taken on 10 July 2026 during a routine operation to bring the two spacecraft from a relative safe orbit to a distance of 147 metres from each other, in preparation for a formation flight.
While the monochrome image on the right shows us exactly what the Occulter’s cameras see, the left-side image was artificially coloured to make our spacecraft spotting easier.
This image was taken by the wide-angle camera (WAC) onboard Proba-3’s Occulter spacecraft and processed by the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
[Image description: A view of Earth from space fills almost the entire image against a black background. The planet is shown from above the Indian Ocean, with Africa on the left, India in the upper right, and Southeast Asia along the right edge. The image is split by a vertical slider, with the right side in colour and the left side in black and white. Moving the slider to either side reveals more of that version of the image. The coloured image on the right is dominated by the deep blue ocean in the centre of the image, while white swirls of cloud stretch across the continents and seas. A small dark spacecraft with a few shiny parts and a solar panel orbits near the right edge of the planet.]