DSCOVR goes around the Sun at Lagrange point 1, a specific orbit that provides EPIC with a constant view of our home planet's sunlit surface. The new study uses data from NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) instrument, which is onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, satellite.
A new study uses Earth as a stand-in for an exoplanet, and shows that even with very little light-as little as one pixel-it is still possible to measure key characteristics of distant worlds. But, these distant worlds are extremely faint and difficult to image directly. The study of exoplanets-planets that lie outside our solar system-could help scientists answer big questions about our place in the universe, and whether life exists beyond Earth. These observations were obtained by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) instrument onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, satellite, on Aug. Each wavelength highlights different features of the planet - for example, the continent of Africa is visible in the lower right image, but is nearly invisible in the upper left image. These images show the sunlit side of Earth in 10 different wavelengths of light that fall within the infrared, visible and ultraviolet ranges the images are representational-color, because not all of these wavelengths are visible to the human eye.
