Witness a year in the life of Earth, as seen from 1 million miles away
One of NASA's farflung eyes in the sky offers a unique perspective on our planet over the course of a year.
This time last year, NASA released a beautiful new view of Earth as seen by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr) satellite from its unique vantage point of 1 million miles (about 1.6 million kilometers) away. With 12 months under its space-belt, Dscovr has now delivered a full year's worth of images highlighting the swirling clouds and brown and green land masses of our Blue Marble.
The time-lapse video, published Wednesday, is made possible by the satellite's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). NASA used over 3,000 EPIC images to compile the footage, which shows our planet twirling around against the dark of space. Dscovr's location in space is known as Lagrange point 1, a spot where NASA says the satellite is "balanced between the gravity of our home planet and the sun."
EPIC records a new image every two hours. Dscovr primarily focuses on monitoring how solar winds impact Earth. According to NASA, the space camera also allows scientists to "monitor ozone and aerosol levels in Earth's atmosphere, cloud height, vegetation properties and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth." That's a lot of information coming from one satellite. It's a bonus that Dscovr also delivers beautiful views of our planet.