It should also be pointed out that the DSCOVR spacecraft was father away from Earth than it was from the Moon when the image was taken. So the
relative size of the Earth as seen from DSCOVER (which was about 1,000,000 from Earth) will be different than the relative size of the Moon when seen
from DSCOVER (which was about 760,000 miles from the Moon. The Moon being closer than the earth, it would look slightly larger compared to Earth than
it should.
I mean, if we were only 100 feet away from the Moon, it would look HUGE compared to Earth.
About 2 years ago, I made a post in a thread asking if something was wrongs with the Moon because the DSCOVER image didn't look like the earth and
Moon were the right sizes relative to each other. In that post, I explained why.
This is part of that post from 2 years ago:
Here is one of the still images from the DSCOVR spacecraft that is 2048 pixels x 2048 pixels total. I measured the diameter of the Earth to be
roughly ( I may be off by a few pixels) 1600 pixels wide. The Moon in that same image was roughly 575 pixels wide. The relative difference between
those is that the Earth is 278% larger.
FULL Size Image:
www.extremetech.com...
Smaller image to fit in this thread (use link to full size image above):
Now, that's not to say that the Earth is 278% larger than the moon, because it isn't. The Earth is about 7926 miles in diameter while the Moon is
about 2160 miles in diameter. So calculating the actual size difference between the Earth and Moon would mean the Earth is 367% larger than the
Moon...
...So why is there a discrepancy in the relative size of Earth to the Moon in the DSCOVR/EPIC image (367% versus 278%)? What's up with
that?
Than answer is simple: The Moon was closer to the DSCOVR spacecraft than the Earth was when the picture was taken, so the Moon will look larger than
it should be in comparison to Earth. The spacecraft was about 1,000,000 miles from Earth when the picture was taken, but only about 760,000 miles
away from the Moon. So the distance between DSCOVER and Moon was only 76% of the distance between EPIC and the Earth.
76% of 367% = 278%.
B-I-N-G-O! The relative sizes in the EPIC image are correct.
edit on 22/12/2017 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)