Have you ever wondered what the “dark side of the moon” looks like? Well, wonder no more.
Ta-da!
This image was taken back on July 16 by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is a four mega pixel CCD camera and telescope about the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, located about 1 million miles from Earth. It’s an unusual shot, not only because of the distance and illumination, but because it offers up a portion of the moon that is never visible from Earth. Essentially, because Earth and the moon are tidally locked, the orbital period is the same as it’s rotation around the axis.
To be fair, it’s not actually the first image of the dark side of the moon. This first images came from Soviet Luna 3 in 1959. In 2008, the Deep Impact spacecraft offered up images taken from 31 million miles away.
So what are you looking at in this picture?
This view of Earth is the Pacific Ocean, close to North America with the North Pole located in the upper left of the frame.
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On the moon, you can see the Mare Moscoviense, the “Sea of Moscow”, which is a basaltic plain created by ancient volcanic eruptions. It’s called a lunar mare, which is basically moon sea, because early astronomers thought the dark spots were bodies of water. The Mare Moscoviense is the dark spot on the upper left hand part of the moon. Interestingly, this side of the moon has only a few of the basaltic plains.
The dark spot in the lower left is the Tsiolkovskiy crater, a lunar impact crater with a central peak rising, 10,499 feet from the floor. If you’re wondering about the name, it was named for a Russian scientist who pioneered astronautic theory.
The image is actually a series of three images taken about 30 seconds apart. EPIC, which is the greatest name for a camera ever, works by taking three different monochromatic exposures and 10 images using different narrowband spectral filters. This technique produces the “natural color” images.
But this really isn’t the main goal of DSCOVR. The satellite is tasked with tracking different things about Earth like ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in the atmosphere. EPIC will take images of various items to be studied allow for comparisons and historical tracking. Plus, it will be taking pictures like the one above twice a year. Brace yourself for a biannual blog.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense
