NASA has released a spectacular animation presenting a unique view of the moon as it was photographe

NASA has released a spectacular animation presenting a unique view of the moon as it was photographed last month passing between the sunlit side of Earth and a satellite positioned 1.6 million km away.

Taken by a camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite between 3.50pm and 8.45pm EDT on July 16th, the images show the fully illuminated ‘dark side’ of the moon that is not observable from Earth.

The images were taken by the US space agency’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (Epic), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite.

Epic maintains a continuous view of the fully illuminated Earth as it rotates, providing day-to-day scientific reports of ozone, vegetation, cloud height, and airborne aerosols.

From next month, the camera will provide a series of Earth images allowing study of daily variations over the entire globe and NASA will post daily colour images to a dedicated public website; the images will show different views of the planet as it rotates through the day and will be accessible 12 to 36 hours after they are attained.

About twice a year the camera will capture images of the moon and Earth together as the orbit of DSCOVR crosses the orbital plane of the moon.