We’ve all been there. Taking a picture of a friend only to have someone else run in front of the shot. That was the case for NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, which took a new ‘blue marble’ portrait of the Earth last month. In a more recent photo (and animated GIF!) the Earth is briefly overshadowed by the Moon zipping in front of the satellite’s camera.
The pictures were taken during the afternoon and evening of July 16. DSCOVR is situated a million miles away from Earth at the Lagrange Point, giving it the perfect vantage point to capture the Earth and Moon in a single shot. The pictures also captured the far side of the Moon, or the side that isn’t visible to us here on earth. Scientists have seen the far side before, as far back as 1959, but it is still an exciting sight.
The satellite expects to capture pictures like this (with the Earth and Moon together) about twice a year, and additional pictures from DSCOVR are expected next month. So this is really just the beginning of what should be a pretty robust photo library, photobombs included.