News in Science

New 'blue marble' shows off Earth's sunny side

Earth from space This is the first view of the entire sunlit side of the planet taken by NASA's new space weather satellite.

Perched 1.6 million kilometres above the Earth's surface, the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft (DISCOVR) grabbed this image on July 6, 2015.

The photo shows most of North and Central America peaking through the planet's heavy cloud cover, with the north western coast of South America and parts of the Amazon also visible.

The reflection of the Sun can be seen glinting off the clouds and the Pacific Ocean near the centre of the image.

"The images clearly show desert sand structures, river systems and complex cloud patterns," says DSCOVR project scientist Adam Szabo, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.

"There will be a huge wealth of new data for scientists to explore."

The new picture is a composite of red, blue, and green images taken by DISCOVR's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC)

The team are now working on a new version of the image, which emphasises land features, and removes the bluish tint which is making the continents appear grey. The tint is caused by sunlight being scattered by air molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

The satellite, which was launched in February, constantly monitors the day time side Earth, measuring ozone and aerosol concentrations, including dust and volcanic ash levels, as well as cloud heights, vegetation properties, ultraviolet reflectivity, and solar wind strength.

Related Our beautiful planet: the blue marble in 2015

Related: Hello Earth!

Hosted by Stuart Gary, StarStuff takes us on a weekly journey across the universe. StarStuff reports on the latest news and discoveries in science, with a special focus on astronomy, space sciences and cosmology.



