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Title    NASA: Sun Shining on Ice May Be Making Earth Sparkle
Date    Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:55AM
Author   
Topic   
from the or-unicorn-poop dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/05/16/2022212

butthurt writes:

Science Alert reports on the discovery, in images from NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft, of flashes of light from the Earth:

[...] NASA detected 866 bursts of light between June 2015 and August 2016, and they were all coming from the land.

A similar phenomenon had been seen before:

Back in 1993, astronomer Carl Sagan noticed strange flashes of light showing up in images of Earth taken by the Galileo spacecraft.

[...]

In Galileo's images, they found large glints of light, reflecting like mirrors - but he could only find them in regions of the planet covered in water.

Previously, specular reflections from water had been offered as the explanation. Now, the phenomenon is thought to be reflections from horizontal ice crystals.

Further information:
video with sound

Related stories:
Video: "One Year on Earth" from NASA's DISCOVR
NASA Releases Photos of Illuminated Dark Side of the Moon
Something Different - Space Photos of the Week from Wired
SpaceX DSCOVR Launch Postponed To Monday (18:07 ET)


Original Submission

Links

  1. "butthurt" - https://soylentnews.org/~butthurt/
  2. "Science Alert reports" - https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-has-detected-hundreds-of-unexpected-flashes-reflecting-off-our-planet
  3. "Deep Space Climate Observatory" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSCOVR
  4. "video with sound" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN4aSHc0n0w
  5. "Video: "One Year on Earth" from NASA's DISCOVR" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/07/25/0148216
  6. "NASA Releases Photos of Illuminated Dark Side of the Moon" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/08/07/1353230
  7. "Something Different - Space Photos of the Week from Wired" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/07/26/1416257
  8. "SpaceX DSCOVR Launch Postponed To Monday (18:07 ET)" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/02/09/1441203
  9. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=20238

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