NASA offers an “EPIC” new view of Planet Earth

Delighting lovers of astronomy everywhere, NASA today released the first public photo taken by its Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, which is mounted on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite launched earlier this year.

NASA has a blog post explaining the photo’s significance:

This first public image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the disk a characteristic bluish tint. The EPIC team is developing data processing techniques that will emphasize land features and remove this atmospheric effect.

Once the instrument begins regular data acquisition, new images will be available every day, 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired by EPIC. These images will be posted to a dedicated web page by autumn 2015. Data from EPIC will be used to measure ozone and aerosol levels in Earth’s atmosphere, as well as cloud height, vegetation properties, and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth.

NASA will use this data for a number of Earth science applications, including dust and volcanic ash maps of the entire planet.

It has not been possible to captures images of the entire sunlit side of Earth at once since Apollo 17 astronauts captured the iconic Blue Marble photograph in 1972. While NASA has released other blue marble images over the years, these have mostly been mosaics stitched together with image processing software—not a single view of Earth taken at one moment in time.

“This first DSCOVR image of our planet demonstrates the unique and important benefits of Earth observation from space,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “As a former astronaut who’s been privileged to view the Earth from orbit, I want everyone to be able to see and appreciate our planet as an integrated, interacting system.”

This is a big deal. Thanks, NASA, for making this happen!