Fifty years after Apollo 17 astronauts despatched again an iconic picture of Earth, capturing the awe of the cosmos and fragility of our planet like by no means earlier than, time-lapse pictures have been launched to mark the anniversary.
The Blue Marble, because it got here to be recognized, was snapped on 7 December 1972, and on the time showcased an unprecedented degree of element.
With clouds swirling over the African continent in full daylight, surrounded by the vivid blues of Earth’s oceans, the planet stood out like a beacon amid the deep, darkness of area.
In partnership with Planetary Visions and NASA, which ran the Apollo 17 mission, Living Earth Orchestra (LEO) has launched distinctive time-lapse pictures to indicate how the planet has modified.
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Since 2015, NASA has been working a deep area observatory outfitted with a digital camera referred to as EPIC.
It’s a million miles from the Earth and has been taking Blue Marble-style pictures each two hours.
But right this moment, NASA commissioned EPIC to take pictures each 13 minutes for 3 hours, creating an virtually real-time view of the planet.
The outcomes may be seen within the video beneath.
LEO has been creating know-how to broadcast such pictures of Earth anyplace, on a regular basis, and there are plans to construct a constellation of satellites to indicate off the planet day and night time.
Chief scientist Dr Jan-Peter Muller, emeritus professor of picture understanding and distant sensing at UCL, mentioned the pictures would encourage a brand new era to look after the way forward for Earth, simply because the Blue Marble did.
“We reveal both the wonder of and damage to the Earth’s ecosystems. When you see what is happening, it is a compelling wake-up call,” he mentioned.
“We believe this is a vital new tool for all those concerned and responsible.”
LEO’s goal was to “make the state of the Earth visible at global and local scale”, however Dr Muller mentioned it had “taken many years to bring together the necessary technology”.
The hope is that the pictures is not going to solely present how the planet has modified since 1972, however the way it may change in years forward.
Source: information.sky.com”