Planet Earth... from a million miles away!

GLANCE at this image and it’s instantly recognisable as Earth.

Incredibly, however, it’s the first complete picture of our planet for more than 40 years.

It was taken from almost one million miles away by a satellite called DSCOVR – short for the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which was launched in February.

The high-quality image, showing swirling wisps of cloud and blue oceans, is a stark contrast to the icy, barren photos of Pluto we saw last week.

Charlie Bolden, Nasa’s chief administrator, said: ‘DSCOVR’s observations of Earth, as well as its measurements and early warnings of space weather events caused by the sun, will help every person to monitor the ever-changing Earth, and to understand how our planet fits into its neighbourhood in the solar sys- tem.’ The image clearly shows the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the land mass of North America and Mexico, with the narrow peninsular of Baja California especially visible.

DSCOVR will remain in its current orbit – a point 930,000 miles away – where neither the Sun or the Earth’s gravity can wrench it out of position because they are both balanced.

Data from the satellite will be used to measure levels of ozone and chemical droplets in the Earth’s atmosphere as well as cloud height and vegetation properties.

Since 1972 when Nasa released an image nicknamed ‘The Blue Marble’ taken by astronauts on Apollo 17, other images have been produced of Earth, but these have been ‘mosaics’ made from stitching multiple shots together.

‘Early warnings of weather events’