"EPIC" is term NASA used to describe the newly released portrait of Earth as well as the instrument that captured it.
Unveiled in a news release Monday, the new image shows the Earth completely lit on one side, via the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) at a distance of one million miles. The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captured North and Central America, but NASA plans for the instrument to photograph more sides of our planet.
CLICK HERE to see the image in greater detail.
"[EPIC is] a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope," NASA said in its release. "The image was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters - from ultraviolet to near infrared - to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these color images."
NASA launched DSCOVR in Feb. and reached its destination last month. Bloomberg News noted that NASA chose the distance of one million miles, referred to as "L1," because it is a point in which the satellite will not be influenced by either the sun or the Earth.
The DSCOVR satellite is a collaborative effort with the U.S. Air Force and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Al Gore, U.S. Vice President at the time, oversaw the satellite's two-year construction, Bloomberg reported, but the project sat idle until its launch earlier this year.
