Awesome shots!
Because of the particular angles & distances, it looks like the moon is almost grinding against us! Of course, that's just an optical illusion; the actual distance & proportions are more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy)#/me...
The moon is about 1/4 as far away from earth as the camera is. The camera always sees the sunny side of the earth - neat trick! http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/
I hope people don't flag this because of its admittedly millennial-sounding headline...I'm not a huge astronomy geek but was surprised at this particular juxtaposition of two familiar entities. It almost looked Photoshopped. I was also surprised that this kind of visual arrangement is unusual enough to warrant an article, but that's because I'm clueless to where our satellites are usually positioned in relation to the Earth and moon.
Basically the only way to get a view like this is to be in a lissajous orbit at the Earth-Sun L1 point and happen to get a lucky alignment between the satellite, earth, and Moon sometime near a full moon.
Earth sees the other side, so it's a new moon from earth and a full Moon from the satiate. However, due to location closer to the sun (L1) the satellite always sees the sunny side of the Moon.
The Moon won't appear to rotate because this is only covering a very short arc of its total orbit. Despite appearances here, the Moon is a long way away. The Earth's diameter is about 13 mega-metres, but the Moon is about 400 mega-metres away. So here the Moon is moving through a tiny proportion of its orbit.
So just as when you look at a very small section of a circle it appears more-or-less to be a straight line, so when the Moon moves through a tiny portion of its orbit it doesn't appear to rotate.
The clouds are moving. But you have to remember HUGE cloud formations move fairly slowly. Consider this shot is only about four hours. If you don't believe me, look at the clouds about 1/3 of the way down, over Mongolia I believe, they finish up near the center... As they move across the screen they get thinner.
As far as the moon rotating, it takes about 28 days for it to rotate, this was 4 hours. So it will rotate about 2 degrees?
Surface points on the equator rotate at about 1000 mph, while, relative to the surface, clouds move at a few percent of that; at a global scale, the clouds aren't going to move that much over the course of three and a half hours.
The moon is tidally locked to the earth and thus only rotates at about one revolution per month (about 27.3 days relative to the stars and about 29.5 days relative to the sun and to the DSCOVR satellite at the Earth-Sun L1 point which took these pictures);
Again, rotation that slow isn't going to be obvious in a time lapse covering only three and a half hours (if I'm doing the math correctly I'd expect under 2 degrees of rotation during the period covered by this timelapse)
"Ok, the photos are coming through now. Which, lol, should provide conclusive proof that no one is operating on the dark side of the.... what the hell is that?"
"Since Earth is extremely bright in the darkness of space, EPIC has to take very short exposure images (20-100 milliseconds). The much fainter stars are not visible in the background as a result of the short exposure times." - http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/DSCOVR/
The history of the DSCOVR satellite is pretty interesting. Was pushed for by Al Gore in the 90's -- unofficially known at the time as GoreSat -- but was ultimately killed by the Bush administration. Obama's administration resurrected the project, and now we have an amazing view of earth for science, discovery, and some pretty neat pictures.
A few days ago, in a moment of 6-degrees of youtube, I came across a flat earth video. Out of curisoity to see what their beef was, I watched one. It was interesting. One of the claims was that all of the earth images we have are not actual photos or pictures per se, but rather, artists renditions (I think they used a different term which I don't recall at the moment). Apparently, this point was admitted to by NASA too. And they had pictures of earth from space (taken and distributed by NASA) over the years where continent sizes change drastically on the same circle. One of them even had "sex" spelled in the clouds.
Watching this, it too looks like an artist rendition. Notice how the moon moves in a straight line. And while the earth rotates around, the moon doesn't. That is fine as we see only the same side/face of the moon but remember: this is taken from far far away so, at that distance and angle, you should be able to pick up a change in the moon's rotation as well. Here, we don't.
Readit News
http://imgur.com/prywsJq
So just as when you look at a very small section of a circle it appears more-or-less to be a straight line, so when the Moon moves through a tiny portion of its orbit it doesn't appear to rotate.
The Earth's rotation in the original gif makes it more difficult to see the cloud movement, but it's certainly present.
The moon is tidally locked to the earth and thus only rotates at about one revolution per month (about 27.3 days relative to the stars and about 29.5 days relative to the sun and to the DSCOVR satellite at the Earth-Sun L1 point which took these pictures);
Again, rotation that slow isn't going to be obvious in a time lapse covering only three and a half hours (if I'm doing the math correctly I'd expect under 2 degrees of rotation during the period covered by this timelapse)
Dead Comment
"Ok, the photos are coming through now. Which, lol, should provide conclusive proof that no one is operating on the dark side of the.... what the hell is that?"
No, this proves that there aren't any space nazis on the far side of the moon.
Deleted Comment
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87675&eocn...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observato...
Watching this, it too looks like an artist rendition. Notice how the moon moves in a straight line. And while the earth rotates around, the moon doesn't. That is fine as we see only the same side/face of the moon but remember: this is taken from far far away so, at that distance and angle, you should be able to pick up a change in the moon's rotation as well. Here, we don't.
Interesting indeed.