NASA have just released this photo of the world, the first in a series of daily images that will be made available to view online in September. This from Time:

The image shows a sunlit Earth from one million miles away. NASA says the photo was snapped with an Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera, and a telescope.

I know the people at NASA are some of the smartest people on the planet, but you can’t tell me they didn’t sit around the NASA conference table trying to think of a cool acronym for their new camera. And they nailed it.

Here’s the EPIC photo that’s causing such a stir.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Facebook (at the behest of The White House) to make this rather profound comment:

Earth. Not mounted on a stand, with color-coded state and national boundaries, as schoolroom globes are prone to display. Instead, we see our world as only a cosmic perspective can provide: Blue Oceans — Dry Land — White Clouds — Polar Ice. A Sun-lit planet, teeming with life, framed in darkness …

Occasions such as this offer renewed confidence that we may ultimately become responsible shepherds of our own fate, and the fate of that fragile home we call Earth.

Crikey.

[source: Time]