A couple of times per year the dances of the Earth, Moon, and DSCOVR line up so that it sees the Moon pass directly in front of the Earth.
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A NASA camera on board the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured what scientists call, “a rare lunar transit”.
On July 15th, 2015, NASA recorded and reported the first lunar photobomb to be witnessed by the satellite. The satellite is orbiting about 1.6 million km from Earth.
DSCOVR’s underlying mission is to monitor real-time solar wind for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), another agency of the USA government.
EPIC keeps a constant eye on the sunlit Earth as it rotates, providing observations of ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in the atmosphere. By maintaining focus on the Earth during daylight, EPIC captures data on daily variations across the globe – but every so often, something gets in the way. The North Pole is at the top of the images. The far side of the moon was not visible until 1959 when a Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 beamed back the first ever images of this side.
This is the second time EPIC has spied the Moon’s far side, and the third time it has caught the Moon crossing its field of view. However, depending on the relative orbital phases of the moon and DSCOVR, the moon appears between the spacecraft and Earth once or twice a year.
The image is actually developed by stitching together three separate images taken in quick succession.
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The first time was on July 16, 2015, just 10 days after it began taking pictures from its position at Lagrange Point 1. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these color images. The moon is moving over the Indian and Pacific oceans. This natural lunar movement also produces a slight red and blue offset on the left side of the moon in these unaltered images. A collaboration between NOAA, NASA, and the US Air Force led to the development and assembly.
