Posted on 02/07/2022 12:10:12 PM PST by Red Badger
This animation features actual satellite images of the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) and telescope, and the Earth – one million miles away. Credit: NASA/NOAA
Although it looks fake, this viral footage of the Moon orbiting Earth is actually real. It’s just not new, despite making the rounds again this week; it actually was captured over 6 years ago.
Back in 2015, a NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) captured this unique series of images displaying the ‘dark side’ of the moon. The ‘dark side’ of the moon is often used to refer to the hemisphere of the moon that is facing away from Earth. However, it is more properly called the ‘far side’ as it is exposed to an equal amount of sunlight as the side facing Earth. We can never view the ‘far side’ from Earth due to a phenomenon called tidal locking, which occurs when an astronomical body takes the same amount of time to complete a full rotation around its axis and fully orbit around its partner.
Although DSCOVR’s primary purpose is to monitor solar winds for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the satellite also houses NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) which captured these images. This four-megapixel CCD camera and telescope maintains a constant view of Earth as it orbits and takes 13-22 images every day.
In order to capture Earth’s ‘natural color’, NASA combines three different monochrome exposures taken 30 seconds apart. The final combined image has a slight green offset to the right of the moon and thin blue and red offsets to the left of it which is due to the Moon’s movement between each exposure.
If you wish to view more images taken by EPIC, NASA publishes daily color images of different views of the Earth as it rotates throughout the day.
However!!!! The Earth spins faster than the moons orbit so it still appears to be moving east to west...
True, that explains why the Moon rises about an hour later every night.............
I just got done watching all 3 seasons of the new Lost in Space. If you can fit it thru the social mesgs and the other crap forced on us in today’s American movies, they did do a great job with space scenes... Planets, galaxies etc... Was actually impressed.
A series about the BIDENS?..........
The eyes and brain are bad about determining absolute brightness, only relative. Since the moon is the brightest object in the sky at night the eyes will interpret it as maximum brightness of that hue against a black background. Similarly Mars looks bright red even though it’s real color and reflectivity are close to a chocolate bar.
Article about a camera
World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps First 3,200-Megapixel Images – Will Explore Cosmic Mysteries
https://scitechdaily.com/worlds-largest-digital-camera-snaps-first-3200-megapixel-images-will-explore-cosmic-mysteries/
FTA:.... their resolution is so high that you could see a golf ball from about 15 miles away.
-snip-
The focal plane has some truly extraordinary properties. Not only does it contain a whopping 3.2 billion pixels, but its pixels are also very small – about 10 microns wide – and the focal plane itself is extremely flat, varying by no more than a tenth of the width of a human hair. This allows the camera to produce sharp images in very high resolution.
At more than 2 feet wide, the focal plane is enormous compared to the 1.4-inch-wide imaging sensor of a full-frame consumer camera and large enough to capture a portion of the sky about the size of 40 full moons.
I bet our spy satellites see even better.
I too believe in Creation.
The moon and earth have a perhaps “perfect” relationship to each other. Mass, size and distance of both allows the earth to rotate without too much wobble, tidal forces allow the ocean to cleanse itself near shore enough without causing huge damaging tides (but not stagnant either which would be bad), etc.
And when it comes to a total eclipse the moon and sun are just the right sizes and distances from each other to pretty much perfectly align themselves. Not only is this just beautiful, it allows humans (even hundreds of years ago) to study the Creation even more and learn the science behind it.
Of course one could also argue that it all just happened by chance, and because of that chance we are able to see it (as it supports life).
It is amazing to me that we have a satellite that orbits the earth that is that far away! Outside of the orbit of the moon!
It’s at the Sun-Earth L1 point, so not really orbiting the earth. It’s orbiting the Sun, but at the same (angular) speed as earth.
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