12 Jul Watch the Moon crossing in front of Earth
Here’s something you don’t get to see everyday: the Moon crossing in front of the Sun lit face of the Earth, captured by a four megapixel CCD camera installed on a Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite. This is the second time this year the “Dark Side” of the Moon (or more accurately name the “far side”) was captured moving in between the camera and the Earth, which orbits at 1 million miles from our planet.
NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) camera maintains a constantly lit view of our planet, providing a multitude of “scientific observations of ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in the atmosphere“, including pictures of Earth like these.
The “far side” of the Moon is seen crossing in front of Earth, while it rotates from Oceania to East Africa.
The last time EPIC had captured a similar event “was between 3:50 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. EDT on July 16, 2015“. The latest images were taken “taken between July 4 at 11:50 p.m. EDT and July 5 at 3:18 a.m. EDT (0350 UTC and 0718 UTC on July 5)“.
Here’s a schematic of how the DSCOVR satellite is positioned in orbit.
“The NOAA satellite DSCOVR, which houses NASA’s EPIC camera, is at the Lagrange Point 1 about a million miles from Earth. The Moon is an average of 238,855 miles from Earth, thus it appears in scale larger than expected since it is between the DSCOVR satellite and the planet.”
– NASA
Source: NASA, 11/07/2016