NASA’s EPIC has captured something rare:
a solar eclipse.
Pointing at our planet from nearly one million miles away,
the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, or EPIC,
snaps more than a dozen photos every day.
The high quality images are useful
for monitoring factors like the planet’s
vegetation, cloud height, ozone, and wildfire smoke.
These images, taken by EPIC on June 10, 2021,
show what Earth looks like from space
during an annular solar eclipse.
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is positioned between the Sun and Earth.
The Moon's shadow is projected onto Earth's surface.
An annular eclipse takes place when the Moon is near its farthest point from Earth.
The Moon appears smaller than the Sun in the sky.
As the two align, the Sun appears as a ring of fire
surrounding the dark disk of the Moon.
EPIC sits aboard NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, DSCOVR.
Since its launch in 2015,
it has been orbiting a point of gravitational balance between the Sun and Earth
known as the L1 Lagrange point.
EPIC’s unique perspective gives us insight into how our planet is changing.
And during an eclipse, it can make for some photos that are...
pretty epic.