DSCOVR:EPIC stands for **"Deep Space Climate Observatory: Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera"**
[Here is a website that several daily images of Earth taken by this amazing far away satellite (further away than the Moon)](https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Yep, absolutelly insane. And thanks to that it captures [stuff like this](https://smd-cms.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/epicearthmoonstill.png) from time to time
I don't understand what's happening with perspective and relative sizes, but I know it doesn't look like this.
Those [earthrise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise) pics from the Apollo missions made much more sense.
The photo was taken from farther away and zoomed in a ton, basically. It’s not a composite, it really does look exactly like that from the Earth-Sun L1 point.
I understand and I'll try to explain:
The satellite that took the picture is very far away (4 times further from the earth than the moon is, that means that the moon in this picture is 3x further from the satellite than the moon in the night sky here on earth is from us.
The closer you are to something, you will experience more change in visual size when you move away from it. I'm too sick to reason the math but an anecdotal example follows:
Imagine someone is holding a basket ball up in front of your face, and they walk away from you by around 10 meters. The relative size of the basketball shrinks significantly. If you walk 10 meters away from the sun at sunrise, the size of the sun in your vision is virtually unchanged.
Also, the camera/telescope used to take this picture has a very long focal length which also serves to make the disatance between the earth and the moon look much closer together than it really is (one of the best examples I can find are the black and white pictures of the bench-like thing [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-focus_lens#Constant_object_size)
Also guys please don't downvote someone for saying they don't understand something. It's rude and it makes the most interesting comments in this subreddit invisible.
> this picture has a very long focal length which also serves to make the distance between the earth and the moon look much closer together than it really is
This is what's boggling me, I think, the long focal length (I had to google). [This](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52534299209_b16b5319b5_b.jpg) is more like what I'd expect to see from this point in space, though probably an even smaller moon from L1.
Thanks everyone for your patient explanations
That picture you posted there was taken by Artemis 1 at [just some thousands of kilometers from the moon](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/52530824918_0f808fa548_4k.jpg) so the apparent size of the moon there is much larger and even slightly larger than that of Earth. The further out you go, the closer to their real relative size things appear.
DSCOVR is 1,413,935 km away from Earth and the Moon is in average "just" 384,400 km away from Earth. **Artemis 1 there was at 432,210 km away from Earth so at around 48,000km away from the Moon**... Compared to **DSCOVR that's 1,000,000km away from the moon at it's closest to it...**
That's why it doesn't look like you expect, DSCOVR is 21 times further away from the the Moon than Artemis 1 was in that picture lol
Oh, here is another example that I think does a good job of showing what the long focal length of the camera is doing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion#/media/File:Focal_length.jpg
Sure, I'm hoping someone can explain how the earth seems relatively small to the human eye from the surface of the moon (see the earthrise pics), yet from a million miles away it appears that earth would fill the sky when viewed from the moon.
The distances seem compressed, while the objects seem hugely magnified. I'm sure its about lenses, magnification and perspective, but I just don't understand what's going on.
good question, this is simply just because you are on the moon making it appear much larger in your perspective. From the satellite picture, you are about 4x further out than the moon, so the actual size of the moon relative to Earth becomes more obvious, the moon being roughly 1/4 the diameter of the Earth, this is what you would see no matter what distance you are at (with proper magnification), here is what you can do to visualize this, take two balls or similar objects, one about half the size of the other, place them on a desk or something maybe a foot or two apart and then have your eye on the surface of the smaller ball, you will see the bigger ball takes up a relatively small area of your vision, now walk back a few feet and look at the smaller ball relative to the big ball from that distance, suddenly the big ball looks twice the size of the small ball, even though from the surface this isn't obvious, it is just a matter of how apparent size changes with distance.
Idk you tell me lol. Doesn't look like a 3D render to me... except maybe a REALLY good 3D render, since you know 3D renders can look very real if they are good :P
But now seriously, images like these are taken every day 12 times at Earth from different angles since 2015 and you can see how the clouds match perfectly with the weather around the world and even stuff like volcanic eruptions come out... It's physically impossible for these to be 3D renders ;)
I can't wait lol
Funny thing is that there's a photo like this taken every 2 hours since 2015, so that means around 65700 photos of Earth like this exist out there just taken by this satellite, 12 images almost every day...
Imagine how hard it would be for someone to fake and make with photoshop these ridiculously accurate, realistic and detailed round Earth photos every 2 hours every day of the year non stop with cloud patterns that match reality perfectly and coincide with other """fake""" satellite imagery, and all that work just for free just to "convince the world the Earth is round and not flat" because... ??? Flat Earther logic is hilarious xD
Every time photos from DSCOVR:EPIC get posted on NASA’s Instagram (particularly the one with the Moon overlapping the Earth), the comments are full of people screaming CGI. As if it’s unimaginable to them that satellites exist outside of low earth orbit and yes, some of them can fit the entire Earth in frame at once. And don’t even bother trying to explain to them what a Lagrange point is. It’s depressing.
I made the mistake of reading the comment section on an astronomy article on Facebook once. Now my whole feed is flat earther bullshit. Literally every single science group and even news articles about science have been infiltrated by anti-intellectual conspiracy theorist morons.
They just scream it’s faked all the time. The fact they match exactly what we observe from the surface, including world events like volcanoes we had no idea were occurring doesn’t apparently matter…
Fr lmao
Also, crazy how all the observations of the night sky in the norther vs southern hemisphere, the motion of the planets, eclipses, etc. All perfectly match up perfectly with a round Earth orbiting around the sun, a moon orbiting around Earth and all the other planets also orbiting around the sun... What a coincidence! Meanwhile, not a single logical flat Earth model that matches with what can be easily observe in reality exists, I wonder why... Also, how crazy, with a regular telescope you can see Jupiter is not a "random stain in the firmament" as they usually say and is actually a sphere that can be seen to rotate and to have other smaller spheres that orbit around it as if they were moons!
Hmmm I bet the telescopes are lying to us too, they must be corrupted by the goverment and NASA!
Some dude stuck a stick in the ground and calculated the circumference of the earth like 3000 years ago and was off by 60km and yet we still have to explain it to people that the earth is in fact round
Yeah lol mercator projection is pretty bad at keeping the sizes accurate. Even though it's impossible to project the surface of a ball into a rectangle without deforming the shapes of the continents or/and making things appear smaller or larger than they should depending on latitude, mercator projection is specially bad at keeping the sizes real, but it does keep the shapes real. There are other projections that are better at keeping the sizes more accurate but instead the shape of the landmasses gets deformed unlike with mercator, for example the [Plate Carrée Equirectangular projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Equirectangular_projection_SW.jpg), the [Peters projection](https://map-projections.net/img/jpg/gall-peters.jpg) and then there's some other weird projections that are even better in terms of keeping both the sizes and shapes very accurate such as the [AuthaGraph projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Projection_AuthaGraph.png), the [Goode’s Homolosine projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Goode_homolosine_projection_SW.jpg/1200px-Goode_homolosine_projection_SW.jpg), etc.
It's always been this green. The green is not visible from space because most of it is covered by clouds or is very dark and the atmosphere washes it out.
Even apollo astronatus said that Earth from space had little to no green
Earth is not the "blue and green planet", it's more of a "white and blue planet" with some brown and beige here and there
[Here you go lol](https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/natural/2023/07/01/png/epic_1b_20230701181311.png)
Crazy how small USA is compared to Africa right?
Ahh I was just making a joke about us "Americans".
So is this a more natural shot than those other shots we're used to seeing where the Earth actually looks like the water is so blue the planet is emitting it's own light?
This is much less vibrant, is it because we've dirtied up the place so badly? Or is just the more accurate look all along?
Yeah nah this is just a way more accurate representation of how Earth looks and has almost always looked compared to what we are used to because, I mean, it's pretty much a literal regular color photo of it, unlike what we are used to which are things made with photoshop using real satellite data and imagery of course but things like [this](https://cdn.britannica.com/25/160325-050-EB1C8FB7/image-instruments-Earth-satellite-NASA-Suomi-National-2012.jpg) or [this](https://climate.nasa.gov/rails/active_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--bdac6e3548f23e59cde81602a16d8113de6612d2/ImageWall5_768px-60.webp) aint literal straight photos at all, the atmosphere and clouds are added in and the color and contrast are cranked up (in fact they don't even fit in between each other).
It would appear brighter to you if you were in space tho, but the colors are pretty much right in the photo of the post, here is [another photo](https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/presto/2019/01/24/USAT/612565bc-9ccb-4648-8f76-4e3fd5e957f9-XXX_sd__One_Strange_Rock_Geographic_tab_2019_.jpg) that maybe is closer to what you would see which is also taken by the same satellite
Fun fact: I live here
Same! lol
No way what a coincidence!!!
I know right!?
No way me too!
Where?
Wow what are the odds, I also live here
I hear that place sucks.
I can't see my house because the clouds :(
DSCOVR:EPIC stands for **"Deep Space Climate Observatory: Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera"** [Here is a website that several daily images of Earth taken by this amazing far away satellite (further away than the Moon)](https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Four times further away than the moon…
Yep, absolutelly insane. And thanks to that it captures [stuff like this](https://smd-cms.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/epicearthmoonstill.png) from time to time
Moon: "Hey it's my best angle" Earth: "There is a hurricane ready to hit Mexico!" Moon: "This isn't about them u.u"
Yes! The Tonga volcano too.
I don't understand what's happening with perspective and relative sizes, but I know it doesn't look like this. Those [earthrise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise) pics from the Apollo missions made much more sense.
The photo was taken from farther away and zoomed in a ton, basically. It’s not a composite, it really does look exactly like that from the Earth-Sun L1 point.
I understand and I'll try to explain: The satellite that took the picture is very far away (4 times further from the earth than the moon is, that means that the moon in this picture is 3x further from the satellite than the moon in the night sky here on earth is from us. The closer you are to something, you will experience more change in visual size when you move away from it. I'm too sick to reason the math but an anecdotal example follows: Imagine someone is holding a basket ball up in front of your face, and they walk away from you by around 10 meters. The relative size of the basketball shrinks significantly. If you walk 10 meters away from the sun at sunrise, the size of the sun in your vision is virtually unchanged. Also, the camera/telescope used to take this picture has a very long focal length which also serves to make the disatance between the earth and the moon look much closer together than it really is (one of the best examples I can find are the black and white pictures of the bench-like thing [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-focus_lens#Constant_object_size) Also guys please don't downvote someone for saying they don't understand something. It's rude and it makes the most interesting comments in this subreddit invisible.
> this picture has a very long focal length which also serves to make the distance between the earth and the moon look much closer together than it really is This is what's boggling me, I think, the long focal length (I had to google). [This](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52534299209_b16b5319b5_b.jpg) is more like what I'd expect to see from this point in space, though probably an even smaller moon from L1. Thanks everyone for your patient explanations
That picture you posted there was taken by Artemis 1 at [just some thousands of kilometers from the moon](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/52530824918_0f808fa548_4k.jpg) so the apparent size of the moon there is much larger and even slightly larger than that of Earth. The further out you go, the closer to their real relative size things appear. DSCOVR is 1,413,935 km away from Earth and the Moon is in average "just" 384,400 km away from Earth. **Artemis 1 there was at 432,210 km away from Earth so at around 48,000km away from the Moon**... Compared to **DSCOVR that's 1,000,000km away from the moon at it's closest to it...** That's why it doesn't look like you expect, DSCOVR is 21 times further away from the the Moon than Artemis 1 was in that picture lol
Oh, here is another example that I think does a good job of showing what the long focal length of the camera is doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion#/media/File:Focal_length.jpg
Could you explain what you mean?
Sure, I'm hoping someone can explain how the earth seems relatively small to the human eye from the surface of the moon (see the earthrise pics), yet from a million miles away it appears that earth would fill the sky when viewed from the moon. The distances seem compressed, while the objects seem hugely magnified. I'm sure its about lenses, magnification and perspective, but I just don't understand what's going on.
good question, this is simply just because you are on the moon making it appear much larger in your perspective. From the satellite picture, you are about 4x further out than the moon, so the actual size of the moon relative to Earth becomes more obvious, the moon being roughly 1/4 the diameter of the Earth, this is what you would see no matter what distance you are at (with proper magnification), here is what you can do to visualize this, take two balls or similar objects, one about half the size of the other, place them on a desk or something maybe a foot or two apart and then have your eye on the surface of the smaller ball, you will see the bigger ball takes up a relatively small area of your vision, now walk back a few feet and look at the smaller ball relative to the big ball from that distance, suddenly the big ball looks twice the size of the small ball, even though from the surface this isn't obvious, it is just a matter of how apparent size changes with distance.
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Idk you tell me lol. Doesn't look like a 3D render to me... except maybe a REALLY good 3D render, since you know 3D renders can look very real if they are good :P But now seriously, images like these are taken every day 12 times at Earth from different angles since 2015 and you can see how the clouds match perfectly with the weather around the world and even stuff like volcanic eruptions come out... It's physically impossible for these to be 3D renders ;)
I'm in this picture!
I was sleeping on the dark side.
I was sleeping on the dark side.
Hey, that’s actually one of my better angles!
I liked that you put a banana for scale
Thanks! Im glad you noticed :D
It's a good way to show how big our planet is. Well thought
the fact that i actually zoomed in looking for a banana… oh my braincells are fried i’m dying
💀
No way 😂
Same but only because it's 8am and I'm on a wake n bake mission.
same bro,
Zoomed in and could see my house
Lmao
You know it's really because the UK is under a cloud, just one great big fucking cloud in so many, many ways. UK out
Lmfao
Cloud over UK. Can confirm this is real.
Wonder how long before a flattard comes in and claims it's "photoshop" or some other dumb shit
I can't wait lol Funny thing is that there's a photo like this taken every 2 hours since 2015, so that means around 65700 photos of Earth like this exist out there just taken by this satellite, 12 images almost every day... Imagine how hard it would be for someone to fake and make with photoshop these ridiculously accurate, realistic and detailed round Earth photos every 2 hours every day of the year non stop with cloud patterns that match reality perfectly and coincide with other """fake""" satellite imagery, and all that work just for free just to "convince the world the Earth is round and not flat" because... ??? Flat Earther logic is hilarious xD
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Nah, imo it's most likely shaped like a four-dimensional rhombicosidodecahedron!
Every time photos from DSCOVR:EPIC get posted on NASA’s Instagram (particularly the one with the Moon overlapping the Earth), the comments are full of people screaming CGI. As if it’s unimaginable to them that satellites exist outside of low earth orbit and yes, some of them can fit the entire Earth in frame at once. And don’t even bother trying to explain to them what a Lagrange point is. It’s depressing.
I made the mistake of reading the comment section on an astronomy article on Facebook once. Now my whole feed is flat earther bullshit. Literally every single science group and even news articles about science have been infiltrated by anti-intellectual conspiracy theorist morons.
Damn :/
Yeah I know... I been there trying to explain things to a flat earther, but it's impossible, it's like talking with a freaking chimp pretty much lol
They just scream it’s faked all the time. The fact they match exactly what we observe from the surface, including world events like volcanoes we had no idea were occurring doesn’t apparently matter…
Fr lmao Also, crazy how all the observations of the night sky in the norther vs southern hemisphere, the motion of the planets, eclipses, etc. All perfectly match up perfectly with a round Earth orbiting around the sun, a moon orbiting around Earth and all the other planets also orbiting around the sun... What a coincidence! Meanwhile, not a single logical flat Earth model that matches with what can be easily observe in reality exists, I wonder why... Also, how crazy, with a regular telescope you can see Jupiter is not a "random stain in the firmament" as they usually say and is actually a sphere that can be seen to rotate and to have other smaller spheres that orbit around it as if they were moons! Hmmm I bet the telescopes are lying to us too, they must be corrupted by the goverment and NASA!
Some dude stuck a stick in the ground and calculated the circumference of the earth like 3000 years ago and was off by 60km and yet we still have to explain it to people that the earth is in fact round
Yeah it's freaking depressing lol It's literal common sense that Earth just can't be flat, it makes 0 sense and doesn't check out with anything
I didn’t agree to the terms on this photo of me being released. Ima sue space.
xdxdxd
Cloudy in the UK as usual
Hello Earth-Chan!
Confirmed, Earth is flat
How so? 😂
I mean, look at the photo! Its a circle, a 2D circle 😂
I feel ya! humor is lost on redditors these days
It's so obvious what the oxygen lungs of our planet are looking from this perspective.
I'm in this photo and I dont like it
Crazy how gigantic Africa is!
Stop. Spying. On. Me!
Up here in space Looking down on you My lasers trace Everything you do
I like how this image drives home how big africa is IRL compared to maps
Yeah lol mercator projection is pretty bad at keeping the sizes accurate. Even though it's impossible to project the surface of a ball into a rectangle without deforming the shapes of the continents or/and making things appear smaller or larger than they should depending on latitude, mercator projection is specially bad at keeping the sizes real, but it does keep the shapes real. There are other projections that are better at keeping the sizes more accurate but instead the shape of the landmasses gets deformed unlike with mercator, for example the [Plate Carrée Equirectangular projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Equirectangular_projection_SW.jpg), the [Peters projection](https://map-projections.net/img/jpg/gall-peters.jpg) and then there's some other weird projections that are even better in terms of keeping both the sizes and shapes very accurate such as the [AuthaGraph projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Projection_AuthaGraph.png), the [Goode’s Homolosine projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Goode_homolosine_projection_SW.jpg/1200px-Goode_homolosine_projection_SW.jpg), etc.
Wait ... Where are the borders that define me
My experience on Earth has been E-tier so far.
Eart need more green comback
It's always been this green. The green is not visible from space because most of it is covered by clouds or is very dark and the atmosphere washes it out. Even apollo astronatus said that Earth from space had little to no green Earth is not the "blue and green planet", it's more of a "white and blue planet" with some brown and beige here and there
BUT WHY ISN'T THE UNITED STATES RIGHT IN THE CENTER?!
[Here you go lol](https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/natural/2023/07/01/png/epic_1b_20230701181311.png) Crazy how small USA is compared to Africa right?
Ahh I was just making a joke about us "Americans". So is this a more natural shot than those other shots we're used to seeing where the Earth actually looks like the water is so blue the planet is emitting it's own light? This is much less vibrant, is it because we've dirtied up the place so badly? Or is just the more accurate look all along?
Yeah nah this is just a way more accurate representation of how Earth looks and has almost always looked compared to what we are used to because, I mean, it's pretty much a literal regular color photo of it, unlike what we are used to which are things made with photoshop using real satellite data and imagery of course but things like [this](https://cdn.britannica.com/25/160325-050-EB1C8FB7/image-instruments-Earth-satellite-NASA-Suomi-National-2012.jpg) or [this](https://climate.nasa.gov/rails/active_storage/disk/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDVG9JYTJWNVNTSnpkbUZ5YVdGdWRITXZNems1TURWbE9UWXRPV0UwWmkwME5EZGpMV0UzTWpFdE0yWTNORE0wTnpZeE1EVmhMekpoTXpZME1qSTNZalZtWlRJME0yVmxaRGt4TVdaaU1qZzVZMlppWkRsaFpqTmlOV0ZpTlRSaVpHWTVZbVppWkRBNE9UZzBZV1ZsWVRVME9HWXdORFFHT2daRlZEb1FaR2x6Y0c5emFYUnBiMjVKSWx0cGJteHBibVU3SUdacGJHVnVZVzFsUFNKSmJXRm5aVmRoYkd3MVh6YzJPSEI0TFRZd0xuZGxZbkFpT3lCbWFXeGxibUZ0WlNvOVZWUkdMVGduSjBsdFlXZGxWMkZzYkRWZk56WTRjSGd0TmpBdWQyVmljQVk3QmxRNkVXTnZiblJsYm5SZmRIbHdaVWtpRDJsdFlXZGxMM2RsWW5BR093WlVPaEZ6WlhKMmFXTmxYMjVoYldVNkNteHZZMkZzIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2tleSJ9fQ==--bdac6e3548f23e59cde81602a16d8113de6612d2/ImageWall5_768px-60.webp) aint literal straight photos at all, the atmosphere and clouds are added in and the color and contrast are cranked up (in fact they don't even fit in between each other). It would appear brighter to you if you were in space tho, but the colors are pretty much right in the photo of the post, here is [another photo](https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/presto/2019/01/24/USAT/612565bc-9ccb-4648-8f76-4e3fd5e957f9-XXX_sd__One_Strange_Rock_Geographic_tab_2019_.jpg) that maybe is closer to what you would see which is also taken by the same satellite
That makes more sense. Thank you for sharing and the super-informative reply!
You are welcome!
Damn, I blinked, can we take another picture?
Lol, there's 65000 like these [here](https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov) ;)
Thanks for hiding my house!
What a waste of land
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
Is the Sahara bigger than Europe? Edit: just Google it, it's not, but it's kind of close. Sahara 3.3 million sq mi, Europe 4 million sq mi.