New NASA website offers amazing views of Earth from space
NASA is offering earthlings a new outer space perspective of the blue planet.
Thanks to a new website launched Monday, you can get new view every day of our world from one million miles away.
The space agency will post a dozen new images daily of Earth, photographed by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite. The images will show 360-degree shots of the planet as it rotates over the course of 24 hours.
These shots come courtesy of the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), which is a 10-channel spectroradiometer on DISCOVR. It serves as a four-megapixel CCD camera and telescope.
The images taken from the camera's unique vantage point will be used for a variety of applications like measuring ozone, aerosols, cloud height and reflectivity, UV radiation estimates at Earth's surface, and the planet's vegetation. EPIC has a field of view of 0.63 degrees, which means that it is able to image Earth in its entirety, according to NASA's new website.
A string of 10 images are taken at any given time in various light wavelengths, from ultraviolet to infrared. A combination of blue, red, and green channel images result in the vivid color images of the planet that NASA had been teasing space watchers with prior to the website's launch. This creates an image quality equivalent to that of a photo taken by a 12-megapixel camera. Each image is shot 12 to 36 hours prior to going live on the site.