NASA Snaps Pics of the Dark Side of the Moon

NASA has released rare images which show the “dark” side of the moon against a backdrop of a sunlit planet Earth.

The photographs were taken by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is positioned in between the earth and the Sunday. These photos will be publicly available on a website about 12 to 36 hours after being taken, and they aren’t just pretty pictures. Also impressive is the fact that the photos were captured from about 1 millions miles away. However, the primary objective of DSCOVR is to monitor solar wind and warn scientists on earth of any possible weather events that may affect installations on earth.

Though this is not the first time the far side of the moon has been captured, but it is the first illuminated view from this distance.

NASA had released an animation of the other side of the moon as it transits the Earth on Wednesday. But when DSCOVR goes into full operation next month and starts sending back near-real-time images, we can expect to see a new-moon photobomb roughly twice a year. This quirk is due to the fact that the Moon is tidally locked with Earth, resulting in the rocky body constantly showing us the same side. Instead of the flat, dark plains together with some craters, the far side is pockmarked with many more craters, evidence that the moon was constantly bombarded in its early history. NASA says the North Pole is in the upper left corner of the image. Adam found the Earth a truly brilliant object in the dark space as compared to the lunar surface. That’s because the colour images are a combination of red, green and blue pictures taken 30 seconds apart.

The satellite DSCOVR has taken about 100 days to reach the final orbital destination between Earth and Sun after it was launched in February last using SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.