NASA released a GIF of the dark side of the moon as it passed across the illuminated face of the Earth.
The images were taken by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite over the course of the day on July 16. DSCOVR, which is run by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and spends most of its time monitoring the Earth’s atmosphere from afar, shot these photos on a NASA camera while orbiting the planet from a million miles away.
As the Earth turns, we can see North America, the Pacific Ocean, and Australia slowly come into view behind the moon:
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the far side of the moon—the Russians sent back photos in 1959, and NASA’s Deep Impact satellite got a similar view in 2008—but this is the first time a string of photos have been turned into a GIF. And this could quite possibly be the most epic GIF ever, seeing as it was taken by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, or EPIC, for short.
There is no dark side of the moon, really—matter of fact, it’s all dark.