Stunning GIF shows moon crossing Earth from new satellite 1 million miles away
Source: Washington Post
NASA just released a pretty amazing GIF from its brand new, solar wind-monitoring satellite DSCOVR. From one million miles away, the satellite captured the far side of the moon as it passed in front of Earth on July 16.
While DSCOVR’s main objective is to provide space weather data on potentially destructive solar winds, it has a remarkable telescope and high-resolution camera that is trained toward Earth. DSCOVR arrived at its final orbiting place just a few weeks ago, after it was launched into space in February. But as the satellite has been getting comfortable in its new orbit, DSCOVR has been wowing us with full-disk images of our home planet.
We never get to see the far side of the moon because although our lunar satellite is orbiting Earth, its position is “tidally locked.” Unlike Earth’s rotation around the sun, the moon is in synchronous orbit which means we always see the same moon night in and night out.
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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/08/05/stunning-gif-shows-moon-crossing-earth-from-new-satellite-1-million-miles-away/
The animated GIF is several megabytes, so I didn't embed it inline.
I'm looking for a smaller version.
Here's one frame from the video:
= new reply since forum marked as read
That Cool Goresat Picture We Have all Waited For
By Keith Cowing on August 5, 2015 1:04 PM. 3 Comments
DSCOVR Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth (Video)
"A NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. The series of test images shows the fully illuminated "dark side" of the moon that is never visible from Earth. The images were captured by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite orbiting 1 million miles from Earth. From its position between the sun and Earth, DSCOVR conducts its primary mission of real-time solar wind monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."
Moon photobombs Earth in amazing video from DSCOVR satellite
by Alan Boyle on August 5, 2015 at 12:10 pm
The moon passes across Earth’s disk in a July 16 image captured by the DSCOVR satellite from its observation point, a million miles out in space. The Americas and the Pacific Ocean are visible beneath Earth’s cloud cover. Because the moon was moving while DSCOVR acquired the data for this three-filter image, there appears to be a thin green offset on the right side of the moon’s disk, and slight red and blue offsets on the left side. (Credit: NASA / NOAA)
The Deep Space Climate Observatory, better known as DSCOVR, is designed to provide full-disk, sunlit views of our home planet from a vantage point a million miles away. But every so often, the moon crosses through the frame. Today, NASA released the first amazing photobomb sequence.
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The Earth-watching part of the mission follows through on an idea put forward by Vice President Al Gore back in the 1990s – and the former veep was obviously tickled to see the latest pictures released from NASA’s lockbox:
.@Nasa just released an incredible video of the moon passing in front of the Earth from #DSCOVR’s vantage point https://t.co/pRSjQDUWp8
— Al Gore (@algore) August 5, 2015
Update for 12:50 p.m. PT Aug. 5: So when’s the next photobomb? That’s what I asked Adam Szabo, who’s the DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Here’s his emailed reply: “I have checked with the flight dynamics folks, and we do not have a similar lunar transit occurring in 2015 at all. Our [prediction of] spacecraft orbits for 2016 is not complete yet to a precision to predict a precise date for the lunar transit.”
Which would mean you're seeing the Western US and Mexico through the clouds.
The image with the moon also seems to show Tropical Storm Dolores, which was in that location at the right time. (http://phys.org/news/2015-07-nasa-tropical-storm-dolores-weakening.html)
the science haters heads must be nukeing .
between the Earth and the Sun. It's orbit is close to that of the Earth's because it uses the gravity of the Earth to keep it in that stable orbit. It's in something called a "Lagrangian Point" and this one is "L1" 
