Hello World! Check Out A High-Res Earth From One Million Miles Away

[Fanghawk]

Hello World! Check Out A High-Res Earth From One Million Miles Away

NASA has released its first photo from the Deep Space Climate Observatory - our own planet Earth in high resolution.

We here at The Escapist are <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/space>big fans of space, so it doesn't take much prompting <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140558-Hubble-Space-Telescope-Turns-25>to post gorgeous stellar photography for everyone to see. But few images strike a universal sense of awe like Earth itself: A blue marble floating through the black that puts all of our lives in a very different perspective. So it should come as no surprise which photo NASA first released from its Deep Space Climate Observatory - a high resolution image of our world from one million miles away.

"This first DSCOVR image of our planet demonstrates the unique and important benefits of Earth observation from space," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said. "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. DSCOVR's observations of Earth, as well as its measurements and early warnings of space weather events caused by the Sun, will help every person to monitor the ever-changing Earth, and to understand how our planet fits into its neighborhood in the solar system."

The DSCOVR launched from Earth on Feb 11 2015, but was first proposed back in 1998 by Vice President Al Gore. Its mission is to watch Earth from the <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point>L1 Lagrangian point, where it can track solar wind conditions, coronal mass ejections, and monitor changes in our ozone and climate.

And this first photo won't be the last. Once DSCOVR begins regular data aquisition, new pictures will be available every single day, 12 to 36 hours after they were taken. That means we'll have new high-resolution images across the planet very soon, which is good news for scientists - or anyone who likes beautiful pictures.

Of course, there's a long tradition of taking pictures of Earth from space. In recognition of DSCOVR's first photo, please enjoy this gallery of historic NASA images compiled by the folks at Forbes - including the one-pixel wide Earth as seen by Voyager in 1990.

[gallery=4435]

Source: <a href=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11752722/Amazing-picture-of-sunlit-Earth-from-one-million-miles.html>Telegraph

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[WonkyWarmaiden]

Well this just feeds into all my existential issues. We really aren't much of anything in the grand scheme of things, are we?

 

[Lagslayer]

7.8/10

Too much water.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

That's one pretty blue marble.

A million miles, though? According to Hollywood's poor grasp of the scale of the universe, isn't that distance close to the next star system? /jk

 

[-Dragmire-]

Weird, the wind currents in one of the pictures makes it look like earth has a texture seam.

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

When I see these images I feel benevolence for all humankind. And then I read someone's inane comments on Youtube and it balances things back out.

 

[shrekfan246]

Well this just feeds into all my existential issues. We really aren't much of anything in the grand scheme of things, are we?

I took a stroll down the hole a few days ago, myself.

Spoiler: I ended up spending a lot of time looking at nebulae.

At first I was once again pondering the existence of black holes and their supermassive cousins, which led to me thinking about how absurdly far away from us the Andromeda Galaxy is, which led to me thinking about how many galaxies exist in the universe and how many more we haven't even discovered yet, which then came back to me thinking about how there are supposedly at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone.

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm sorry, but did Earth just take a Selfie?

 

[Johnlives]

Hey I think I recognise that place. I've been there before. Although it doesn't look that smooth when you get closer to it

Well this just feeds into all my existential issues. We really aren't much of anything in the grand scheme of things, are we?

I took a stroll down the hole a few days ago, myself.

Spoiler: I ended up spending a lot of time looking at nebulae.

At first I was once again pondering the existence of black holes and their supermassive cousins, which led to me thinking about how absurdly far away from us the Andromeda Galaxy is, which led to me thinking about how many galaxies exist in the universe and how many more we haven't even discovered yet, which then came back to me thinking about how there are supposedly at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone.

When it really gets bad you realise that you accept the existence of one Universe, so it's not terribly far fetched that there could be two Universes. Then you start losing count of entire Universes.