Title | NASA: Sun Shining on Ice May Be Making Earth Sparkle | |
Date | Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:55AM | |
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from the or-unicorn-poop dept. |
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
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