NASA revealed the reverse side of the moon against the backdrop of the Earth

Photo: NASA / NOAA

NASA's DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) spacecraft managed to obtain a rare image of the far side of the Moon against the background of the Earth - from the Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system (objects located in it are equally attracted to both cosmic bodies). This was reported in a press release from the agency.

The original Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) camera onboard the DSCOVR received the 16 July 2015 year, from a distance of one and a half million kilometers from Earth. The shooting took about five hours: at the beginning of the animation, the viewer sees North America, and at the end the outlines of Australia appear.

On the right side of the moon you can see strange greenish hues. The fact is that color EPIC images are obtained from a combination of red, green, and blue images taken at intervals of 30 seconds. During this time, the Moon has time to move a little, which does not allow to build the perfect color gamut of the final image.

The pictures were taken during the testing of the work of DSCOVR. NASA plans to receive the following images of this kind twice a year.

A part of the Moon is never visible from the Earth due to the fact that the period of rotation around the Earth and the period of rotation around its axis at the satellite are very close. The reason for this synchronization is considered tides, which the Earth causes in the lunar crust. The reverse side of the moon was first photographed by the Soviet AMC Luna-3 7 on October 1959.

The DSCOVR device, whose project was supported by US Vice President Albert Gore in 1998, was sent to 12 February 2015 by means of the Falcon-9 launch vehicle from a spaceport at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

DSCOVR is designed to monitor solar activity. With it, it will be possible to monitor the solar wind and coronal emissions from the star. For this, the satellite will be placed at the Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun at a distance of approximately one and a half million kilometers from the planet.