Bob CollinsWe suppose it’s fitting that on this anniversary of the first landing on the moon by a human, we have the first picture of earth from the deep space observatory.
The image, released today by NASA, doesn’t look all that much different from the one that took the world by storm when Apollo 8 caught the earthrise rounding the moon. That images fired up the environmental movement.
Down here on terra firma, of course, we know things have changed, and not for the better.
Says NASA:
The image was taken July 6, 2015, showing North and Central America. The central turquoise areas are shallow seas around the Caribbean islands. This Earth image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the image a characteristic bluish tint. The EPIC team is working to remove this atmospheric effect from subsequent images. Once the instrument begins regular data acquisition, EPIC will provide a daily series of Earth images allowing for the first time study of daily variations over the entire globe. These images, available 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired, will be posted to a dedicated web page by September 2015.
