NASA released the first image of Earth from its Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite on Monday.
The image shows a sunlit Earth from one million miles away. NASA says the photo was snapped with a Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera, and a telescope.
Soon, EPIC will be taking daily photos of Earth, which will be uploaded to a website 12 to 36 hours later so people can view them by September. This is the first time researchers will be able to study the daily variations of the globe.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson took to his Facebook page "at the request of the White House" to comment on the new photo:
"Earth. Not mounted on a stand, with color-coded state and national boundaries, as schoolroom globes are prone to display. Instead, we see our world as only a cosmic perspective can provide: Blue Oceans — Dry Land — White Clouds — Polar Ice. A Sun-lit planet, teeming with life, framed in darkness …
"Occasions such as this offer renewed confidence that we may ultimately become responsible shepherds of our own fate, and the fate of that fragile home we call Earth."
Here's the original "Blue Marble," as seen from the Apollo 17 mission on December 7, 1972.
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