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An Epic View of the Moon In Earth's Orbital Embrace
astroengine writes: As a suitably impressive follow-up to the new "blue marble" image of our world released in July, NASA shared a gorgeous animation created from pictures captured by NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft positioned nearly a million miles (1.5 million km) away — over four times farther than the moon. In a series of images acquired between 3:50 and 8:45 p.m. EDT on July 16, 2015, the moon can be seen passing in front of a rotating Earth, the warm gray face of its far side framed by the swirling-cloud-covered blue water of the eastern Pacific Ocean. The north pole is at the 11 o'clock position, illustrating our planet's 23.5-degree axial tilt.
The youtube version shows a lot more color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMdhQsHbWTs
Unfortunately, because of the way the images were taken, with separate exposures for the red green and blue colors, the moon is slightly blurred and has a color fringe around it. This is further compounded by the extremely flat light, rendering the moon in the image rather featureless.
What I found most interesting about this image is that it really shows how dark the moon is. It's something to think about when looking at the seemingly stark light of the full moon. Imagine how bright it would be if it was snow white.