Link to source
In case anyone was wondering, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, also known as DSCOVR, is a relatively new satellite. Launched on February 11th, 2015 on board of a Falcon 9 rocket, DSCOVR is in alissajous orbit at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point. Its mission is to study solar phenomena as well as the climate of Earth.
We received the first pictures of Earth from DSCOVR on July 6, 2015, a little after a hundred days after DSCOVR was launched. In addition to the pic op posted, you can view the dedicated website NASA set up for all pictures taken by DSCOVR. I particularly like this gif of the moon transiting the Earth taken on July 16, 2015.
15 comments:
Great photo.
How do you know it's not photoshopped?
You never see a photo like that, and for some reason it looks like proportions are off. (I must be agreeing with Bags a lot these days). But it's hard to know if that's because someone really photoshopped it or because we never see photos of the earth from space with the moon in front of it. Either it was shopped in such a way as to appear way to close to the earth (while maintaining the general relative size proportions, but with a shorter shadow), or it just looks surreal to us and almost like an optical illusion based on the fact that we never have vantage points far enough away to allow us to see both objects together like that.
I will however vouch for the fact that, aside from the website belonging to NASA, when you look at moons in front of planets like that - (as with an amateur astronomer's telescope aimed at Jupiter or Saturn) - it is typical for the moons to look relatively flattened down against the planet as in this photo. It's hard to get good depth perception against humongous objects that many hundreds of thousands of miles away.
I believe it's real, but it's just pure faith. I mean besides God and Timothy Leary, who really knows what it should look like?
Neil Armstrong.
Its amazing how perfectly round the moon and the earth are. Is there some physics behind the round shape? Maybe CL can answer that.
Or could a cube sharped object revolve perfectly around the sun or another planet?
Either it was shopped in such a way as to appear way to close to the earth (while maintaining the general relative size proportions, but with a shorter shadow), or it just looks surreal to us and almost like an optical illusion based on the fact that we never have vantage points far enough away to allow us to see both objects together like that.
It's a metaphor. We're supposed to appreciate and accept on faith other viewpoints of things familiar.
The down-to-earth take away message is whom does this favor? Trump or Hillary?
AJ Lynch said...Its amazing how perfectly round the moon and the earth are. Is there some physics behind the round shape? Maybe CL can answer that.
A lot of chemistry reduces down to Coulomb's Law. The shapes of planets (non-charged physical objects) are the gravity-based analog, I suppose.
Should I interpret? I can't really explain gravity, though.
I'm suspicious because the Earth doesn't look at all worried about the imminent parching/drowning death at the hands of oil companies which we all know is coming fast. No way she could fake that calm demeanor while enduring the attacks of men and their careless barbeques.
They are not perfectly round, but rather bulging at the equator. It's the weight of Santa's fat ass at home collecting unemployment 364 days a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_bulge
Uh, you sure it's gravity that does that, Chick?
If there's a consensus on that then I'm sure it would make Mr. A. Jay suspicious.
@AJ: To answer your specific question in part: there are lots of orbiting things with odd shapes. Asteroids, for example, can be long and thin and "chunky." They are solid throughout and not molten or gaseous. If you could somehow grind up one of those odd shapes into much smaller chunks, they would self-assemble into a sphere because that's how the gravity-driven matter gets as close and densely packed as possible. Electrons do the same thing, surrounding nuclei -- subject to certain exclusionary rules.
Well that's a side of the moon you never see from Earth.
Leland said...
Well that's a side of the moon you never see from Earth.
And you never will due to the rotation of the earth based on the rotation of the moon. What's amazing is that you see the "Dark Side of Moon" illuminated which in and of itself is a rarity. I hadn't realized that NASA put a solar satellite at the L1 LaGrange point. I think it's the only man made thing there. It's a unique position in that it is a gravity null point between the Earth and the Sun where the gravitic forces are equal to each other. I think it's a million miles out, which makes this image even more amazing which highlights the awesome optics of this satellite.
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