The job of NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is to keep tabs on Earth’s ozone, vegetation, cloud height, and atmosphere. However, for just the second time in the space of one year, the Moon dropped by for a quick cameo appearance.
The images were captured by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard NASA’s deep space observatory between July 4 and July 5. Around Earth’s equator, each pixel from this four-megapixel camera accounts for a squared area 8 x 8 kilometers (5 x 5 miles). This series of images was taken over a period of around four hours where the far side of the Moon, which is never seen from Earth, passes between DSCOVR’s view of the Indian and Pacific oceans.
DSCOVR is orbiting around the Sun-Earth's first “Lagrange point,” around 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from Earth. As NASA explain on their description of the image, this point is “where the gravitational pull of Earth is equal and opposite of that of the Sun.”
The last time EPIC captured this celestial event was nearly exactly a year ago, on July 16, 2015.
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